The Atari Compendium/The Atari Compendium (Toad Computers) (1994).iso/files/umich/utils/clocks/wrldclka.lzh/README.TXT

Text File | 1995-03-03 | 20KB | 440 lines

                     World Clock 1.0a by Dan Wilga
                  Copyright © 1995, Gribnif Software
                         All Rights Reserved.

This program may be distributed freely, provided it and this text file are
unmodified.

See the end of this file for the revision history.

ChocolateWare
-------------

This program is ChocolateWare. If you find it useful, you are encouraged
to show your appreciation by sending a quantity of chocolate candy to the
address below. What kind and how much are up to you. Please just limit
yourself to chocolate, either with or without nuts.

  Dan Wilga
  Gribnif Software
  PO Box 779
  Northampton, MA  01061

     GEnie: GRIBNIF
  Internet: [e-mail]


Too Much Time On My Hands
-------------------------

I often need to call someone in some remote corner of the globe (I've
always hated that expression because, as you probably know, globes don't
have corners) and I find myself wondering if I'm going to be calling at
some rediculously early (or late) time. Most of Europe is easy for me to
remember, but I've already found out that calling an Australian at 5:00 on
Saturday morning is not an acceptable thing to do.

I looked around and could not find a program that suited my needs: I wanted
a picture of the world, not just a text list of cities that are probably
nowhere near the place I really want to call. Of course, in order to keep
track of things accurately, a world clock also needs to have an idea about
daylight savings, and not just assume everyone uses the same method.

[Bored yet? If so, you can skip ahead to the next section. I would have
already, y'know.]

Well, I couldn't find anything that fit the bill, or even came close.  So,
I set about creating my own program. The first thing was to find a map. OK,
that was the easy part. Next, I wanted it to be scalable to any size, so I
used Convector Professional to vectorize the map and save it as a GEM file.

Fortunately, the map I used employs what is probably the most common method
for stretching the continents so that the map of our spherical globe will
end up flat: it's called Mercator's Projection. Unfortunately, it took more
hours of research in the local library than I care to mention to find out
what the mathematical relationship between latitude and map location are
when using this projection. But I finally found a simple formula.

Along the way, I also came across an invaluable book called "The
International Atlas" (see the bibliography at the end of this file), which
not only gives the coordinates of thousands of cities in the world, but
also gives very precise information about how each country (and even each
region within the country) handles daylight savings.

Now I just had to write a program to display the map in a useful way, and
pop a list of cities into a text file. World Clock is the result.


Setting it Up
-------------

World Clock works as a program or a desk accessory. It works in any
resolution, and probably with any graphics card. It also works with
multitasking environments like Geneva, MultiTOS, and MagiC.

To run it as a program, these files are necessary:

  WORLDCLK.PRG          Program
  WORLDCLK.RSC          Resource file
  WORLDCLK.DAT          Data file with cities and other preferences
  WORLDCLK.GEM          The map

There is also a second map called DETAILED.GEM. You can use this in place
of WORLDCLK.GEM by renaming WORLDCLK.GEM to something else (like
LOWREZ.GEM) and then renaming DETAILED.GEM to WORLDCLK.GEM. The
disadvantage to DETAILED.GEM is that it takes more memory to load (just
look at the difference in the file sizes) and whenever the window redraws,
it may redraw more slowly depending on your setup.

To run it as a desk accessory, you would simply rename WORLDCLK.PRG to
WORLDCLK.ACC and put it (along with the other files) in the same directory
as all your other desk accessories.

In order to prevent too much clutter, you can also put everything but the
WORLDCLK.ACC file into a folder called WORLDCLK. For instance, if your desk
accessories load from C:, you would put WORLDCLK.ACC in C:\, and put the
rest of the files in a folder called C:\WORLDCLK\.

The only functional difference between using World Clock as a desk
accessory versus using it as a program is that when used as a desk
accessory, World Clock will only allow you to add 10 places to the list in
one session.


Running it
----------

Once World Clock is running, there is one thing you need to do in order to
configure it for the first time:

                                IMPORTANT
                                ---------

Before World Clock can be of any real use to you, you need to tell it where
you live. Do this by clicking on the "?" icon in the lower right of the
window. This will give you a popup menu. Select the "Edit Places" option.

In the "Edit Places" dialog, you will see that some information about the
various places World Clock knows about by default. What you need to do is
choose a place which is in the same time zone as you currently are, and
uses the same method for daylight savings.

Scroll though the list of places by using the "+" and "-" buttons next to
the name of the current place. Don't worry if you live in Florida and the
closest thing you can find is New York. That's good enough for now.

To help you find a place which is close to you, here is a West to East
list of some of the cities, presented by region:

           USA: Honolulu, HI            Anchorage, AK
                Los Angeles, CA         Denver, CO
                Dallas, TX              Chicago, IL
                Indianapolis, IN        New York, NY

        Canada: Vancouver, BC           Edmonton, AB
                Toronto, ON             Montréal, QC
                Halifax, NS             St. John's, NF

        Europe: Reykjavík               Belfast
                Glasgow                 Madrid
                London                  Paris
                Amsterdam               Roma (Rome)
                Berlin                  Athinai (Athens)
                Helsingfors (Helsinki)  Kijev
                Moskva (Moscow)         Volgograd (Stalingrad)

     Australia: Perth                   Adelaide
                Melbourne               Brisbane
                Sydney

When you have found a place that is in the same time zone and uses the same
emthod for daylight savings, select the "Here" button. This indicates that
the place you chose should be used for computing other times in the world.
When finished, select the "Done" button.

If you can't find a place which is close to where you are, refer to the
section about the "Edit Places" dialog, for more information on how to add
new places to the list.

Now it gets interesting. On the map you will notice that a number of
locations have either a diamond (on a monochrome monitor) or a red plus
sign (on a color monitor). If you move the mouse arrow over one of these
markers and press the left mouse button, a dialog will pop up and tell you
what time it is in that place. If you either let go of the mouse or drag
the pointer away from a place, the popup will disappear.


More Features in the Main Window
--------------------------------

As you move the mouse around the main window with the left mouse button
pressed, you may also notice a coordinate display in the lower right of the
window. This tells you the latitude and longitude the mouse pointer is
currently at, and gets updated as long as the mouse button is pressed.
This feature can be turned off in the "Options" dialog (see below).

By default, World Clock shows the local time in the mover bar of the
window.  This can be turned off in the "Options" dialog, as well.

To conserve screen space, World Clock uses two icons in the lower right
corner of its window. You've already seen what the "?" gadget does (it
gives you a menu of choices), now it's time for you to try the resize
gadget to