Changes to Clock5 since v1.80 ============================= * Added the FreEPOC dialogs and details to the Help file. * Added the latest version (v5.01) of Symbian's SysRAM1.sis installation file to the Clock5.zip file. * Some minor changes to the Stopwatch views to accomodate some of the language translations. * Olivier Peyrat kindly pointed out that Clock5 would crash if a countdown (or countup) elapsed whilst Clock5 was in the background. This has now been fixed. * Justin Barley pointed out that Clock5 would crash when you went to Menu/Program Options if the Standard Folder wasn't set on your machine. I've now fixed this. * Justin also pointed out that the Chimes volume didn't seem to be varying with its volume control. In fact both it and the voice volume were working off the voice volume setting! Ahem. Now fixed. Changes to Clock5 since v1.79 ============================= * A count-down and count-up stopwatch has been added to the available views. Access via the main menu or by using Ctrl+N and Ctrl+U respectively. The Stopwatch runs off the system clock and so should handle both multi-tasking with other programs and switch-offs without any problem. * The Help file has been greatly enhanced to better describe many of Clock5's recently added features. * All the calendars in Clock5 now automatically check what day is set in the system as the first day of the week and adjust themselves accordingly. This is primarily aimed at North American users who tend to call Sunday the first day of the week v's us Europeans who say that Monday is the first day of the week. The program doesn't care any more - it'll quite happily show Wednesday as being the first day of the week if that's what you've set in the Control Panel...! * Rostislav Psota was kind enough to point out to me that even though 24hr clocks are common on the continent, they still only use 12hr chimes! I was unsure of this when I wrote that code. I've now fixed it so that all clocks will only chime up to 12 times. :-) * Alan Foo CheeLun pointed out that at midnight the chimes just kept on chiming and didn't stop! Woops... Thanks for that Alan. Now fixed. * Added the option (under Program Options) to display a leading zero in 24 hour digital clock mode. I.e. 08:23 instead of 8:23. * Changed the digital clocks so that 0:00 (or 00:00!) now shows as 12:00am instead of 0:00am. 0:00 remains for the 24 hour digital clocks however. * Changed the funtion of the Tab key in both the digital clocks so that it toggles between 12hr and 24hr mode. This seemed like a more useful function to me than toggling between an inverted display and non-inverted display... * A couple of people had mentioned that their home town name was quite large and that it wouldn't fit into the Worldtime: Multi Zone view where it shows the home town name. The program now auto-scales the size of the text (up to a point) to help it fit. * Fixed some of the power consumption issues that had begun to creep in to previous versions. Clock5 should once again be frugal with your batteries! My thanks to Jim Turnbull for reminding me about this. * I've gone back to packaging the various OPX installation files separately again (e.g. Systinfo.sis). Various people have had problems installing previous versions of Clock5 when these files were built in. Changes to Clock5 since v1.78ß2 ============================== * Hourly, half-hourly, and quarter-hourly chimes have been added to Clock5 based on the Westminster chimes. There's a new option under the Clock5 menu to enable or disable them and they're configurable via the Settings/ Program Options menu. The new Chimes folder (in system/apps/Clock5/) can be deleted to save space if the chimes are not required and the program will detect this and 'grey out' the Enable Chimes option... Alternatively you can replace the Wesminster chimes I've used with sound files of your own - just use the same names and the program will be happy. * The chimes (if enabled) will also play when Clock5 is in the background. Use Clock5's Hot-Key (Ctrl+Menu) to silence them (unless 'Sleep Mode' is active in which case any letter key should do it). * The program now also looks for the Voice folder (in system/apps/Clock5/) and will 'grey out' the Voice Time option (as above for the chimes) if the Voice files are not present. * Tweaked the sound playing routine (i.e. for Voice Time and Chimes) so that all the animated displays keep on running now whilst the sound is playing - e.g. Digital Seconds, Mystify, etc. * Fixed a bug in the Logos view when running on a 5mx. Psion have moved the location around of some of their logos in the ROM and this could cause the program to crash... * Fixed another small bug in the Logos view which could crash the program if a logo had a long filename (more than 11 characters). * Fixed a minor bug in the Mystify views where the polygon(s) would some- times get 'trapped' at the edge of the screen and/or bounce beyond the edge of the screen. * Tweaked the background keyboard scanning routine again. I'd previously told it to ignore the letters 'y' and 'n' and the Space bar. However, this was causing problems for people when typing quickly with 'Sleep Mode' enabled. I've now removed this restriction which should fix the problem. Changes to Clock5 since v1.78 ============================== * Clock5 is now ER5 compatible. I.e. it should now work on the new 5mx machine as well as the Series5/Geofox. Also, all the OPX files that were previously packaged as seperate .SIS installation files (e.g. Sysram1.sis) are now package inside Clock5.sis for easy installation. * Fixed a small bug whereby I'd forgotten to disable the Ctrl+Esc 'backdoor' - now fixed. ============================== * Clock5's password interface has been greatly enhanced. Users had previously commented that all that could be done once the password had been entered was navigate Clock5's options via the Menu. There are now options (both via on-screen buttons and via the normal shortcut keys) to disable the password immediately upon entry, to send Clock5 to the background, or to revert to the menu as before... Changes to Clock5 since v1.76 ============================== * Clock5 can now act as a speaking clock. There's a new option under the main Clock5 menu called 'Voice Time (Ctrl+V)' and you can choose the volume that you want the voice played at - see 'Program Options'. The SweetDreams function has also benefited from this option and both SweetDreams and Voice Time can be stopped at any time by pressing any key (previously Sweet Dreams could only be stopped in between words). * There's now an option to add a Clock5 icon to your Standard Folder (usually c:/Documents/) in the - now renamed - Program Options menu. * The location of the Clock.ini file has been changed so that it's always kept on c: drive (i.e. in c:\system\apps\clock5\) whether the app is installed to either c: or d: drive. The reason for this is that I was advised by Malcolm Bryant (author of the excellent freeware banking program, abp) that Symbian recomend that all .ini files are stored on c:. This apparently because in a low battery situation, the machine may refuse to write to a CF card even though it'll still write okay to c: drive. I've also associated the .ini file with the Clock5 icon... * The options have been split out slightly under the Settings/Sleep Time menu dialog to allow the sleep timer to be active with - or without - the keyboard activity monitor being active when in the background. * There's a new option under the View/Logos/Choose logo menu dialog to cycle through the available logos, changing each after a preset time. Therfore you could - if you wanted to - use a number of full-screen images to act as changing wallpaper in Clock5. Changes to Clock5 since v1.75 ============================== * A new time view has been created: Worldtime - Multi Zone. This sets up 12 clocks to show the time in different cities. The first clock is automatically set for your home town location (taken from the Time app) and the others can be set as required by pressing the 'Tab' key or the "Worldtime" button on the screen. You can also choose to switch between analog and digital clocks or to remove the borders between the different clocks. * Added a tweak to the Logos view so that using a 640x240 mbm (or 640x320 mbm) on a Geofox - i.e. a full-screen image no longer jiggles the image. It now stays static so that it can be used as 'wallpaper'! Changes to Clock5 since v1.74 ============================== * Fixed a v1.74 bug in the background activity monitor whereby it would crash if brought to the foreground with the password enabled - sorry about that! 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. * Added 2 new options to the 'Viewing Options' menu that lets you display either the digital seconds or the digital minutes clock as an inverse image and/or with the digits' image/shadows reversed. Pressing 'Tab' in either view also toggles the image inversion. 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. * A new time view has been created: Worldtime - Dual Zone. This sets up 2 clocks (in both analog and digital form) for when you're travellling in different time zones. The first clock is automatically set for your home town location (taken from the Time app) and the second can be set as required by pressing the 'Tab' key or the "City" button on the screen. 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. Changes to Clock5 since v0.95ß =============================== * Made the 'About' screen somewhat prettier and added some animation. * Added the help file and access from Clock5's menu. * Added some 'Power-on' options that let you specify whether your Psion will always switch on with Clock5 in the foreground. It can also enable the password if it's previously been set. * Added a hot-key feature (since I haven't been able to get the background activity monitor to work). At present, I've set it to a default of 'Fn + Menu'. This'll bring Clock5 back to foreground when it's running in the background. If people don't like this hot-key, let me know and I can change it - or I might make a Hot-keys Preferences menu to let you choose your preferred combo. * Clayton Hudson pointed out that the 'sleep' function had stopped working - i.e. that the program wasn't returning from the background at its allotted timeout. In fact, I realised that it hasn't been doing this for the last 0.15 versions - but nobody had pointed it out until now. Anyway, it's now working again. :-) * Francis Muir pointed out that the program didn't in fact block Macro5's default task-switching hot key as I said it did in v0.95ß (ooops!). This was pure laziness on my part for not properly checking it. Anyway, I've since checked it properly and fixed the bug. Thanks for letting me know Francis. Changes to Clock5 since v0.9ß =============================== * A number of people have commented that the password protection didn't protect against task-switching programs such as Macro5. I was aware of the problem but hadn't decided what to do about it. v0.95ßm now traps every possible keypress combination (I think!) when the password is enabled and releases it when the password is disabled so that Clock5's operation forms an invisible overlay over whatever task-switching program you prefer. * I realised that if the password was set and enabled when Clock5 started from its Clock5.ini settings then it didn't lockout the systems keys (etc.) as it should. Fixed. Changes to Clock5 since v0.8ß ============================= * The program now remembers all the preferences when you quit it. It generates an init. file (Clock5.init) and installs it in Clock5's own directory (on c:\ or d:\ drive as appropriate. * In v0.8ß, when you put the program into the background from it's own menu and had the password enabled, it didn't re-enable the system keys. It does now. * When the password was enabled in version 0.8ß, you had to hit either the Menu key or select the menu with the pointer to bring up the password check box. Bob Norris suggested other key combos would be useful. Now any key or pointer event will bring up the password box (Escape exits). * Locked out the 'Kill App' key combo (Ctrl+Fn+Shift+K) for when the password was set. Thanks to Stephen Duffy for pointing out this particular loophole. * Found a bug (myself - for once!) whereby if you pressed Escape immediately after pressing the Menu key, the program would crash. Fixed it. Changes to Clock5 since v0.7ß ============================= * Well the 'Sleep' function has been implemented (sort of)... You can choose the duration that you want Clock5 to sleep for and put it into the background and it'll come to the foreground once this time has been reached. However, it doesn't yet detect keyboard or screen activity whilst it's in the background. So even if you're typing away at something else, it'll come to foreground demanding attention! It's taken the last few days thinking about it but I *think* I've an idea how to fix this... * Got bored when I was trying to figure the above out - so I added another bouncing analog clock (a small one this time)! * Made the shadow behind the main Big Clock display slightly larger - thought this improved the 'look' slightly. * Barrie Pfeifer pointed out that the voice recorder buttons would start the Recorder app. - allowing you back into the system (and hence past the password). After somewhat of a headache (and advice from both Richard Reeve and Steve Litchfield) this has now been fixed. The Recorder app. still works in the background but Clock5 detects the buttons being used and takes over again. I've implemented it so that this only works when the password is set - you might want access to the normal voice button activity at other times. * Fixed a _very_ silly bug whereby I'd forgotten to disable the short key code scan in the menu when the password was set. E.g. pressing Ctrl+E quit the program even when the password was set! - should've seen that one! Thanks to Ben Vaisvil for spotting it. Changes to Clock5 since v0.6ß ============================= * Fixed a bug whereby the program wouldn't quit from the system screen / task list when asked. It will now. This also makes the program work with John Boyce's excellent JB5StopGo program. Thanks to John Butterly for pointing this out. * Added all the password menus and error-trapping logic. The password system lets you choose a password without actually enabling it (i.e. make it immediately 'live'). This is designed to be similar to a PC screensaver password and it's so that v0.8ß onwards can only 'time-out' to password protection mode if one has already been set. If there's no password set, the program will just come to the foreground as a clock display. Enabling the password also locks out all the system keys. You have to press the Menu key or tap the Menu silk-key to bring up password box. Be aware however that if you are running task- switching software such as Backlite+ or SwitchTask these will still work and your password protection will not be foolproof! I'll probably address this issue in a future release by building a task switcher into Clock5 - watch this space. * NB: DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD! If you do, the only way (as far as I know) of regaining control of your Psion will be to do a soft reset. Use this program at your own risk - I will not be held responsible for any data lost in this way (or any other way for that matter ). Changes to Clock5 since v0.5ß ============================= * Had to completely restructure the main program routine. This because previously the main program ran the clock and checked to see if any menu keys had been pressed. Fine - so long as you don't want it to switch to do something else (e.g. run a different screen saver module). This also would have made writing a password routine more difficult. All very good and well but just restructuring the program doesn't appear in itself to give any obvious benefit to the user - so I added in a bouncing analog clock display in as an alternative display! * Discovered that the power consumption issue (discussed on my web pages) is more to do with the amount of processor time being used to run the program than whether it's in 2 or 4 colour mode. Hence, slowing the speed of the loop which draws the big digits (by telling the processor to go to sleep for a while) significantly reduces the power consumption. The power consumption of v0.6ß has dropped from ~110mA (in v0.4ß) to ~83mA (c.f. an 'at rest' figure of ~45mA). May be able to improve this figure further. The Bouncing Analog display is even lower: ~54mA. * Improved the efficiency of the digit drawing routines which made the code smaller, slightly faster, and much more elegant! Changes to Clock5 since v0.4ß ============================= * Basic menu structure now in place. This meant I could get rid of the somewhat tacky splashscreen I had in the original! Also allows me to hint at features to come in future versions. More importantly, I've structured the menu routine fairly carefully so that implementing future features should be relatively straightforward. * Discovered a bug in 0.4ß which meant that the hour digits were being re-drawn 2 or 3 times a second instead of only once an hour. Fixing this has speeded up the rest of the display slightly. ---------------------- End -----------------------