Documentation for P_TIME.OPL Version 1.2

Date: 12.10.1995



1. GENERAL

P_TIME.OPL is a program which shows you how you spend your time
with your psion series 3(a). The intention was to create facts to
argue with my wife, who means that I spend too much time joying
with my psion.
Although I have much learned from the DOHELP.OPL - program I request
full copyright for P_TIME.OPL in all parts. P_TIME.OPL may be distri-
buted and used as public domain program. You may use it at your own
risk.
You are allowed to modify this program under the following condition:
If you are modifying successfully P_TIME.OPL I request a copy of the
modificated program.


2. INSTALLATION

Copy P_TIME.OPL to your OPL-directory.
Start the OPL-translator.
Select P_TIME.OPL to edit.
Start translation.
Quit translation whithout starting P_TIME.OPL.
Return to system screen.
Start P_TIME.OPO listed under the OPL-RUN-symbol.


3. HANDLING, FEATURES

After initialization the program quits immediately, but whenever you
select then P_TIME.OPO, it shows its information screen. The screen
contains the following parameters:

total time       =  the time since you have started P_TIME.OPO.

on time          =  time during total time, whenever the computer
                    was switched on.

programming time =  time during on-time, when you have programmed
                    something.

The time is shown in the format days (ddd, 0 - 365), hours (hh, 0 - 24)
and minutes (mm, 0 - 60). The on-time is shown aditionally related to
total time and the programming time related to on-time in percent.

The time measurement is updated every 10 seconds. If you select
P_TIME.OPO it is first shown the last info-screen and you may have
to wait up to 10 seconds until an updated screen is shown. You are
informed about a completed update by a message on the right bottom
of the screen. To quit the screen you have to hit any key.
The error of the shown values is equal to the error of the built-in
watch and the +-10 seconds error. Additional error occurs if you are
regarding the info screen to long, because this is detected as off-
time. I my opinion this error is neglectible if you use P_TIME.OPO
long enough.

The programming time is incremented whenever the standard path of
the foreground application is an OPL or OPD directory. So programming
is detected also it you use another editor than the built-in OPL-
editor (=WORD-application).
Auto-off of the series 3 is not influenced by P_TIME.OPO. Although it
wasn't possible to reduce the priority level of P_TIME.OPO it doesn't
need a lot of activity of your series 3 because of the 10 seconds
count interval. During this interval P_TIME.OPO is waiting for a timer
interrupt before continuing with work. Its work is then completed after
0,006 seconds.


4. VERSION 1.2 ADDITIONAL FEATURES

P_TIME now holds its variables in a data file called P_TIME.DAT in the
\OPD\-Directory on your standard drive. This disk MUST NOT be a FLASH
type, because P_TIME.OPO updates it every 10 seconds.
If you shut down P_TIME.OPO (maybe by backing up your drives using
RCOM's backup command,which will shut down all running programs) the
previous values are not lost. After restarting P_TIME.OPO the program
will first read out this file and set its variables according to the
values stored.


5. KNOWN BUGS

If you have selected an SSD-Drive as standard disk drive, an error will
occur if you open the SSD-door during a write- or read-operation of
P_TIME.OPO to the file P_TIME.DAT. The error type is fatal, so that the
system screen will shut down P_TIME.OPO.


For further information contact:
Heinrich Hiemesch@m2.maus.de