Changes to Clock5 since v1.72 ============================== * Background activity monitor now only scans the letter keys (a-z) to monitor keyboard use. It no longer scan the cursor controls, number keys, etc. and ignores shifted keys (as well as the Ctrl and Fn keys previously ingored). This should solve a problem that a number of people have mentioned - namely that the Open files/programs dialog couldn't be navigated by the keyboard when Sleep Mode was active. This new keyboard scanning routine now places far less load on the Psion - which means that there's now negligible delay in typing in other apps whilst Clock5 is 'scanning' in the background. Changes to Clock5 since v1.61 ============================== * Installation is now by Psion's .sis file method. In theory, this should make installation much easier for the user and version control easier for me! Hopefully it meets with everyone's approval. * Added an option in the Viewing Options menu to display a small calendar in the Digital Minutes view. I realised that I was switching between this and the Calendar view just to look at dates in the current month - so a small calendar in the Digital Minutes view made it easier. * Filippo Zerboni suggested that the space bar should optionally act as an 'off' switch when being used in 'NightClock' mode.  Some people like to leave their Psion open at night rather than fumble with it when they're asleep.  It's easy to turn on (just tap the screen!) but using Fn+Esc to turn it off is a little more difficult...! This has now been implimented so that between the Nightclock times in the Digital Seconds or Digital Minutes views, pressing the space bar will switch the machine off (assuming the NightClock setting has been enabled). * Brian Coutinho,John Hunting, and others suggested that the Digital Minutes view should optionally be able to flash the time separating dots. This is now an option in the Viewing Options. * In previous versions, if you switched the Psion off for longer than the period set in the "Sleep time" it brought the program to the foreground when it was switched back on.  There is now an option to reset the Sleep Mode timer at Power On. My thanks to Tony Crocker for suggesting this option. * As I've mentioned on my web site in the past, a lot of people have had problems getting used to the fact that Sleep Mode didn't allow Fn+Key hotkeys in other programs to work (eg. Fn+N in Pascal Nicholas's excellent Macro5). A workaround for this was suggesed in the Help file but I've now changed the background keyboard activity monitor so that it only captures normal keypresses and Shift+Key presses. It doesn't capture Shift+Cursor keypresses now either (to allow for their use in the Sheet program, etc.). * Something that'd been irritating me for a while was that when you used the Ctrl+Menu hotkey to bring Clock5 to the foreground with its password enabled, it immediately brought up the password entry box requesting the password. You could ignore this of course and it'd go away after 10 seconds - but it still annoyed me! I've now added a 'keyboard de-bounce' at this point so that it doesn't do this any more. * Filip Everaert suggested that the Power On options should be expanded to include more 'Auto Password at Power On' possibility's. Specifically he suggested there should be an option for the password to force its use just once at Power On (thereby potentially replacing the need for the system password). Assuming that the Clock5 password has been set, Clock5 can now do this even when it's in the background at Power On It'll return to the background unless the options have been set otherwise. * Fixed a small bug in the Logos view. When a logo bounced of either the top or the left-hand side of the screen, the first top or left-hand line of pixels was stripped from the logo on the first bounce on these two sides. Now fixed. * Improved the Geofox compatibility. In v1.6/1.61 the program gave "Psion" as one of the built-in logos but loaded only part of the Geofox logo. It should now correctly suggest "Geofox" on a Geofox machine and correctly load the 'fox's logo from the ROM. My thanks again to Bob Norris and Elizabeth Liddell for helping me with this. * Updated the Help file for v1.7. * One change that won't directly affect anybody using Clock5 is that I've started using language resource files (i.e. Clock5.rsc) to contain all the language-specific dialogs. This because manually updating each language version with every version upgrade was becoming a big drain on my available time. With Clock5 currently available in 7 languages, I reckon it would've taken at least 2/3 of my available programming time just to re-code for all the languages! Apart from making life easier for both myself and Clock5's various translators who very generously give up their own free time, there will be an indirect benefit to everyone. I.e. since I'll be able to concentrate on doing what I enjoy (the actual programming), updates should become a bit more frequent again. They'd tailed off somewhat of late as I'd devoted more and more time to re-coding languages. These resource files have been generated using Guillaume Sabouraud's (author of ChemTools EPOC 32) excellent RSCtools2. I'll be talking more about them in future... Changes to Clock5 since v1.6 ============================== * Spotted a minor bug in v1.6. In the Calendar view when showing 2 months, the 2nd set of 'day initials' above the 2nd month wasn't printing on the screen. A simple mistake and I've no idea how it crept into the public release - my apologies... (Still, nobody else told me about it so I guess I got away with it!) ;-) Changes to Clock5 since v1.5 ============================== * Improved the Calendar view. Previous versions had a rather quickly put together view of a calendar - and it had a bug in it! I hadn't realised that some months need 6 lines in which to display all the dates - e.g. November '98! This has been remedied and the whole thing made a bit prettier. There are now also 3 views available: a 1 month view (as before), a 2 month view, and a 6 month view. These can be selected using Settings/Viewing Options or - as in Agenda - by using the Tab key to toggle the views. You can also now move through the months - either by using the curled calendar edges provided on screen or by using the left and right cursor keys. Lastly; pressing the space bar always brings you back to the current date (again, as per Agenda). * I've replaced the 'Crazy Logo' with an altogether more useful option. The original Crazy Logo was really just a space filler - and to test my programming for some animation effects. However, it never really worked as a scrolling view because of the small size of the logo. It's been replaced with 'Logos' which lets you choose from 3 built-in logos (Clock5, EPOC, or Psion) or from your own. If you add a new directory in the Clock5 directory called "Logos" (surprise!) and put standard .mbm files into it, Clock5 will let you choose these new logos as well as the 3 standard ones. The .mbm files have to be smaller than the screen size otherwise Clock5 will refuse them. The logos are selected from the View/Logos/Choose Logo menu or by pressing the Tab key to select each of the available logos in turn. Now you can have your own corporate logo, picture of loved ones, naked women (or men!), etc. as your screen saver... NB: This has meant replacing the old version of the Clock5.mbm file with a newer one - make sure you change to the newer one too! ;-) [NOTE FOR GEOFOX USERS: currently the 'Psion' logo doesn't work on the Geofox. I'm working on this and hope to be able to upload a minor revision fix for this very soon] * Alan Rabbitte pointed out with some (justifiable) exasperation that whilst you could have spaces in the password you set in Clock5, you couldn't then enter spaces into the password box! Ooops - now fixed so that you can. Also enabled Delete key action, added a couple of 'padlock' graphics, added a 10 second inactivity timeout to the password box itself, and made the password box 'pen-sensitive' ... * With the demise of the 'Crazy Logo' view, I didn't feel I could justify that logo's animation in the 'About' splash - or rather, I couldn't justify the disk space it used up in the Clock5.mbm file just to animate the 'About' screen! Therefore, I've reduced the size of this file and replaced the previous animation with a different one that doesn't require 16 frames worth of logo to animate it! The result is that the size of the program files (i.e. not including voice files, etc) has reduced from 72K in v1.5 to 58K for v1.6.... Can't be bad! ;-) * I found a bug whereby if you changed from 12hr to 24hr clock display (or visa versa) but weren't actually in a digital clock display at the time, the program would 'forget' to re-draw the digits to their new size when you did change to a digital clock display. Now fixed. Changes to Clock5 since v1.4 ============================== * Added full integration with the Psion's 8 own built-in alarm timers. Hence any changes made to the Alarms in Clock5 will be reflected in the Time app. and visa versa. You can view, set, disable/enable, cancel, and set the alarm sound settings. The only thing that Clock5 cannot do that the Time app. can is view the time that any given alarm is set for. This is a restriction of RMRAlarm.opx (and possibly the EPOC Kernel hooks). If it changes to allow more access then I'll upgrade Clock5 accordingly. The Alarms settings allow you use any of the Psion's built-in alarm sounds or any alarm sounds you've recorded/installed yourself. * Added the option of an alarm symbol in the Digital views. This is set in the Viewing Options. If set and any of the internal alarms are also set then a little alarm symbol will be shown in the digital views... * Updated the Help file to better describe the way Sleep Mode works and added a new section for the Alarms. * Fixed a bug which Raul Lucky and others found. If the password was enabled and you entered your password into the box to bring up the menu and then used a short-cut key combo instead of the menu itself to select a function; the password box would immediately come back demanding the password again. This was particularly irritating if you'd used Ctrl+h to send Clock5 to the background because it'd go to the background and then bounce back to the foreground with the password box again... * Fixed a bug which occured when Sleep mode was enabled. If Ctrl+Menu was pressed (i.e. Clock5's hot-key) when in the background, it caused the menu to come up in the foreground app. just before Clock5 came to the foreground. It'd stay up on the app. (now in the background) until that app. was used again when it'd probably have to be cancelled - very irritating! ;-) * Fixed a bug in the Calendar view. When operated on German machines, the German word for 'Thursday' is 'Donnerstag' and I hadn't allowed for its extra length. The result was that German machines running Clock5 on a Wednesday in Calendar view would crash the program! I've increased the string length to allow for this - and a fully German version should be released soon anyway. * Tweaked the NightClock/Backlight logic again slightly so that now the ONLY time it will always force the backlight on all the time is if the External power option is selected and external power is present (or if you've opted to use the NightClock timer). At all other times, you can manually control the backlight. However, Clock5 will still check for trigger events such as a change in the external power being present or not and pulse the setting once as appropriate (depending on the setting in NightClock). You'll always be able to change this manually again though. Hopefully now the logic is completely sensible... My thanks again to Harry Brueckner for gently nagging me to fix it! Changes to Clock5 since v1.3 ============================== * GeoFox compatibility. Clock5 now automatically detects if it's running in a 'fox and re-sizes/re-positions the views accordingly. I am completely indebted to Bob Norris for his time, energy, and patience whilst I was figuring out how to get Clock5 to work on his 'fox. Many thanks Bob! * 24 hour clock view. A 'Viewing Options' box has been added which lets you choose between a 12 or 24hr digital clock. It also lets you choose the line width in the Mystify views. * Fixed a bug in Sweet Dreams mode. If your machine was set to start up displaying the Owner Information screen, Sweet Dreams wouldn't run. It's now works with the Owner Info. screen set for start-up. Thanks to Wolfgang Schmid for pointing this out to me. *Program initialisation / saving settings. As more and more variables were getting added into Clock5 for it to remember, it was taking longer and longer for it to both save them and initialise the settings when the program was first run. Also, the format of the Clock5.ini file was changing from version number to version number - meaning that every time a new version of Clock5 was installed, the old Clock5.ini file had to be deleted. By moving from an OPL16 to an OPL32 database structure, I've speeded up the 'saving' routine by >100%. :-) Also, v1.4 will detect a previous version's Clock5.ini file, delete it, and re-initialise the first time it's run. I'm afraid you still have to re-enter your preferences but it's an improvement of having to remember to delete the file yourself! * Background activity monitor. This is now working - for the keyboard at least. When Sleep mode is enabled and Clock5 is in the background, it will monitor ordinary keypresses, Shift+ keypresses, and Fn+ keypresses (NB: not Ctrl+ keypresses) and re-set the sleep timer with every keypress. Therefore when Sleep mode is enabled, Clock5 now behaves like a 'real' screensaver! Points to note: a) it doesn't yet monitor Ctrl+ keypresses, the system keys, or any touch-screen activity, b) it's a relatively processor-intensive activity at present so it tends to slow the keyboard response marginally (more so when there's no external power present - to save battery power). I'll keep working on both of these issues and see if I can improve them in future versions. * Fixed a bug in the sleep timer. Since the sleep timer measures absolute time (i.e. irrespective of whether the Psion has been switched on or off); if the machine was switched off when the timer was due and then switched on later, it would completely miss its cue to come to the foreground. This is now fixed so that it'll come to foreground straight away if it missed its time when switched on. Changes to Clock5 since v1.22 ============================== * Sweet Dreams. This is based upon Steve Litchfields original program and takes its name from it - with his permission of course. ;-) Thanks Steve. As well as giving the flashing external LED option, it can 'beep' the time (using medium-length beeps for the hours and shorter, higher- pitched beeps for the tens of minutes), or speak the time from the voice recordings stored in the new /system/apps/Clock5/Voice directory. For the LED and beeps, the minutes are rounded to the nearest ten minute figure - so the time given will never be more than 5 minutes out either way. Plenty accurate enough for most people in the middle of the night. When Sweet Dreams is enabled and your Psion case is closed, pressing the external 'play' button switches on the machine, flashes the LED (or beeps/speaks the time) and then switches the machine off. Very handy in the middle of the night. (NB: You just have to press the button briefly once. There's a slight delay in the case of the beep and voice options - the reason for which is explained further below) I added the beep/voice options because - although I liked Steve's idea of not disturbing your partner with the silent LED - I frequently travel alone on business when 'disturbing' someone just isn't an issue! Also, personally I find that focussing my eyes on *anything* in the middle of the night takes quite an effort whereas my ears seem to have a 'permanently on' mode of operation! Opening your Psion (assuming this activates it) will also activate Sweet Dreams when it's enabled. However - given that your machine turns off once it's 'done' the time - there's also an option to jump out of Sweet Dreams mode by pressing any key whilst Sweet Dreams mode is running. Also - since nobody can plan for every eventuality - there are bound to be occasions when you know that Sweet Dreams is enabled but you need to open your machine in 'polite' (or maybe not so!) company. There's a 1 second pause before both the beeps or voice option start playing for you to quickly press a key to cancel it. Since memory space is an issue for some people, Clock5 is intelligent enough to know if you've deleted the /Voice directory and will remove the voice option from the Sweet Dreams dialog box. FYI, the 28 ADPCM voice files use something approaching 100Kb of memory space - more than Clock5 itself plus all its associated files (including this one). I apologise now for the voice used (my own...). I surfed the net looking for some pre-recorded files featuring an appropriately sexy female voice - but alas without any luck! If however anyone would care to donate an appropriate female (or male depending on preference) voice, I'd be more than happy to bundle it with Clock5 instead! At the moment, Sweet Dreams only works when Clock5 is in the foreground (with or without password enabled) - not in the background. I can add this feature if people want it though... * Harry Brueckner suggested that the NightClock control logic should be changed slightly to still allow *some* manual control. It has as follows:- The logic behind the NightClock backlight control is now a compromise between control and 'over-control'. Backlight on if power: If ticked, the backlight is always on when power is present/switches off when power isn't present. If un-ticked, the control will switch the backlight off *once* when the box is 1'st un-ticked - but still allows you to manually (or with BL+, Macro5, etc.) turn the light on or off after this. Timed: If ticked, ONLY on between those times (unless over-ridden by power control above). If un-ticked, ALWAYS off (unless over-ridden by power control above). This way, you *can* still have manual control but still control things automatically too... * Changed the 'View' menu around so that the 'Calendar' menu item is at the top of the list. This so that when using the cursor to move right along the menu headings, you don't have to press it twice to get past 'Digital' and then 'Seconds'. My thanks to John Hunting for suggesting this mod. Changes to Clock5 since v1.2 ============================== * Fixed a small bug in the Calendar and Digital minutes views. I'd forgotten that the 11th, 12th, etc. of the month have a 'th' after the number instead of 'st, 'nd', etc. as in say '21st', '22nd', etc. * Corrected some of the information in the Help file which was out of date. * Tweaked the Multi Polygons display to improve the look slightly. Changes to Clock5 since v1.1 ============================== * Added a couple more screensavers: Mystify (Single Polygon) and Mystify (Multiple Polygons). Wonder where I got those names? I felt that the time had come to be able to show WinCE users that you don't need a Pentium PC in order just to bounce some lines around the screen! * Added the NightClock settings and functionality. Now you can set the backlight to come on in the evening and go off in the morning - or switch on/off in the middle of the day if you prefer! It doesn't have to be night time... Also a setting for having the backlight auto-detect whether the external power is connected or not. * The menu structure was becoming a bit cluttered so I added an extra column to the menus and rearranged things slightly (hopefully into a more logical view). Also added a 'memory' to the menu so that it remembers what the last menu option was that was used. * I missed off the Cancel/OK dialog buttons from the 'Sleep Time' pop-up box in v1.1. It still worked fine with the Esc/Enter keys but I've now added the buttons so it'll work with the pointer. * Once Clock5 v1.1 had been 'unlocked' from its password, it'd bring up the menu. If it was then hidden using Ctrl+H instead of the Hide menu, it'd go to the background but leave the keyboard locked. This is now fixed. Thanks to Alastair McCulloch for spotting this. * Another one from Alastair but which took me a lot longer to fix... Fn+Help wasn't captured by the program when it locked the keyboard/silkscreen. In fact, I don't think that key combo. *can* be trapped - which was unfortunate because of course it always fires up the Psion's 'help' details. The program couldn't detect that it was in the background because pressing these keys had also brought up the password dialog box which was patiently waiting for the password to be entered - but now in the background. In the event, I had to write my own password dialog box (instead of using the standard EPOC ones) which would continuously scan the keyboard *and* make sure it stayed in the foreground. Fn+Help will still start up the Psion's help engine - but Clock5 will now come back to the foreground immediately afterwards. * It turns out that some people preferred *not* to have the password entry debounced (i.e. so that the 1st keypress to bring up the password box isn't also the 1st letter entered into the password itself - see previous list of changes for details below). You can now choose this as an option in the password setup dialog box. See the Help file for details also. * Added a keypress beep option to the password dialog box * Fixed a problem that occurred in certain programs when starting up (e.g. Message Suite's Email and Guillaume Dupont's Porfolio). Email (say) would start up then switch into the background for an instant before continuing to run. Unfortunately Clock5 took this as an invitation to jump to the foreground and would promptly do so - leaving the Email program languishing in the background and in need of a task-switcher! Clock5 has now be duly punished and given strict instructions to be better behaved in future... * Fixed a bug in v1.1 and earlier where if you dragged the pointer across the screen it started up the Help file. Doing this more than once made it try to run the same Help file more than once - resulting in an error (and causing much confusion!). Changes to Clock5 since v1.0 ============================== * Added a 'digital minutes only' view. I haven't implemented a 12/24hr switch option yet - but I will. Probably sometime in the next few versions whilst I'm adding some of the other bits I've talked about. * Added a 'calendar' view. I've been thinking about doing this for some time and intend to make it somewhat more interactive than this initial screen. Probably more like the calendar you can bring up in Agenda by pressing the Tab key. Something else for a future version though... * The Hot-key has been changed from 'Fn+Menu' to 'Ctrl+Menu'. This because (as Christian Schmid pointed out) 'Fn+Menu' is normally used in 'Data' to dial phone numbers with. * 'De-bounced' the keyboard for when the password is enabled. Previously when you pressed a key on the keyboard when the password was enabled the password checking box came up and the key you'd pressed became the first letter entered as the password. Now this 1st keypress isn't entered into the password box - the next keypress becomes the 1st letter entered. Thanks to Tim Salmon for pointing this out and reminding me to fix it! * Made Clock5's password 'aware' of the Psion's own system password Previously, if your Clock5 password was enabled in the foreground (i.e. with all the possible key combinations trapped so that no task-switching program could switch programs) and your Psion's system password kicked in (e.g. 1st switch-on the next day or whatever) then you'd get the Owner Info. screen up requesting your system password - but you wouldn't be able to enter it because all the keys were blocked! The only way out of this was to do a soft-reset! Yeuch! Clock5 now detects that the system password is set and asks for permission to temporarily disable it (it'll re-enable it when you exit Clock5). You can chose to ignore this request if you wish and it won't bother you again - but you do so at your own risk! :-) If you let it temporarily disable the system password, you'll still get the Owner Info. screen as before but it won't need the password. All the keys will still be blocked - apart from the ESCAPE key. Press this to bring Clock5 back to the foreground. Thanks (and apologies!) to Joop Smit for finding this particular 'feature'. * 'System Password Check' has been added to the Tools/Settings menu which allows you to toggle between whether or not Clock5 ignores the system password being set. * Improved the animation in the 'About' screen and made the .mbm file much smaller. This has reduced the total memory required for Clock5 (unzipped) by about 40K - even allowing for all the additional features, etc. Not bad, hey? * Re-addressed the power consumption issue. When switched to the background, Clock5 looped around without pausing the processor at all. Consequently the current consumption jumped up to about 110mA when in background mode (i.e. every time you'd normally look at it on the system screen)! This has now been fixed so that in background mode, the program has little or no effect on the current (it reads ~45mA). * Also re-wrote some of the digital clock drawing routine so that it now only draws 68-70mA when in the foreground. NB: I disabled the background mode to measure it - normally you won't be able to measure this! The seconds are also drawn slightly more quickly than before. ---------------------- End -----------------------