***************************************************************** AboutClock V2.00 Copyright 1993 Stuart Davis All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** Contents Distribution Description Usage Development Author Details ----------------------------------------------------------------- Distribution AboutClock V2.00 is Shareware and NOT Public Domain, and as such a small registration fee of 5 pounds sterling is required if you decide that AboutClock V2.00 should be in your software collection. This will entitle you to future major upgrades. Payment should be in the form of a crossed cheque drawn from a UK mainland bank payable to the author. The distribution of AboutClock V2.00 MUST be intact, unaltered, and include the following files : AboutClock AboutClock.info AboutClock.doc ----------------------------------------------------------------- Description Do you remember the good old days when you asked someone the time and they said, "It's nearly five" and not "It's 4:57 and 28 seconds" ? Well now there is a Workbench clock that does just that! AboutClock V2.00 is an unobtrusive clock that nestles neatly at the top of Workbench, telling the time in words in a window that re-sizes itself to account for the length of message required. Also, for short-sighted Amiga users, there is the option to have AboutClock V2.00 speak the time! Not only is AboutClock V2.00 simple and functional, but it is compatible with all versions of Workbench! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Usage - CLI/startup-sequence type "run" like this to run the program in the background: run nil: path:AboutClock To enable AboutClock to read it's preferences, the icon must be present in the same directory as the main program. Usage - WorkBench Double click the icon. That's all there is to it. AboutClock V2.00 will appear in the top left corner of the Workbench screen. AboutClock V2.00 now has two menus, PROJECT and SPEECH. The Project menu gives the options of ABOUT and QUIT, which give details of the author, and quit the program respectively. The Speech menu has TIME?... and SPEECH. Selecting Time? will make AboutClock V2.00 tell you the current time, using the Amiga's incredible built in speech facility, where as selecting Speech will force AboutClock V2.00 to tell you the time whenever it changes. This will be indicated by a tick next to the option. In order to use the speech option, it is required that the following files are present on your setup: DEVS:narrator.device audio.device (WB1.2/1.3 only.) LIBS:translator.library icon.library If the program fails to find these files it won't allow speech after telling you the problem. WB2.x users will find all but 1 of these files on their original WB disks. The audio.device is in the ROM for these machines. * WB3.0 users note :- Commodore have deemed in their infinite strangeness not to include the files narrator.device and translator.library on the WB disks!? Why? Well I suppose that they decided they have power over the Amiga voice and wanted to silence it. (Ahhh...shame on you CBM!) So I have therefore started the anti-CBM RAVe motion, (Return the Amiga's VoicE). This is to persuade the big C to return the lost library and device files to the poor deprived WB3 users who have never heard sexy!?!? Paula speak. If you are a WB3 owner then the files will work on your machine and all you have to do is get them from a friend or a PD library. Then you can hear Paula in her proudest moment!(PC owners suck...!) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Icon Tool Types * AboutClock now checks the icon for the following recognised tool types: POSX=x This can be set to any number but for the program to open its window, the coords must reside somewhere within the screen. Default=0 POSY=y Ditto.. SPEECH=ON|OFF An "ON" or "on" will turn on regular time updates whenever the time changes. Any other string value will be ignored. * N.B. These don't work properly yet. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Development V1.12 Some errors related to telling the time occur at certain times of the day. When AboutClock resizes itself, all active processes receiving user input on Workbench are resized, notably ED and SID V1.06, when used under Workbench 1.3 which can prove to be annoying, but not dangerous. This version NOT released to the public. V1.14 Tells the correct time without errors. About and Quit menus added. Opens too large a window, and crashes the machine when About is selected, under Workbench 1.3. No problems noted for Workbench 2 and above. This version released prior to testing on Workbench 1.3. Released on AUI April'93 issue. V1.14b Window size corrected, and selecting About no longer crashes the machine, but text is not visible (applies to Workbench 1.3 only). V1.15 About text is now visible. Error corrected in telling, the time around 9am which was detected in V1.14b. Released on Amiga Computing Issue 59. V1.16 About requester may be selected as often as you wish with no delay in updating it. V2.00 AboutClock is alive! Version 2.00 includes speech. Also, the about requestor has been improved. It also works on WB3 but requires a copy of a narrator.device to be in the Devs directory, which is not supplied with WB3. AboutClock V2.00 was developed on a HiQ Tower containing an Amiga 500 Plus, 4Mb of 16 Bit Fast RAM, 2Mb Chip RAM, SSL 68020 Accelerator Board with 1Mb of 32 Bit Fast RAM,twin 3.5 inch disk drives, a 105 Mb, 11ms Quantum hard disc drive, a 550 Mb tape streamer, a single 5.25" disk drive, a Citizen Swift 24C printer, two Zipstick joysticks, a Technosound Turbo sampler and a Naksha Mouse. It was written in 100% assembler using the most excellent HiSoft Devpac V3.01. Whew..!! For Workbench 1.3 compatibility, it was tested on an Amiga 500 with 4.5Mb 16 bit Fast RAM and 0.5Mb Chip RAM switchable to 4Mb 16 bit Fast RAM and 1Mb Chip RAM, twin 3.5 inch disk drives, 42Mb GVP hard disc drive, SSL 68020 Accelerator Board with 1Mb of 32 bit Fast RAM and a 68881 FPU, and a KCS PC Emulator. For Workbench 3 compatibility, it was tested on an Amiga 1200, 2Mb Chip RAM, 4Mb Fast RAM, 68881 FPU, twin 3.5 inch disk drives, and a 60Mb hard disc drive. Although not every possible configuration of hardware has been tested, (send me an A4000T and I will test AboutClock V2.00 on it!), it is extremely unlikely that AboutClock V2.00 will not work on your machine. Please report any errors / problems to the author when you register your copy of AboutClock. [ If you don't register, you can't moan ] Thanks go to Howard Manwaring BEd MSc MBCS CEng and Liz Warriner BMus Dip Microprocessors & Prod Des of West Herts College for assistance with the debugging of the original code, Melville Carrie for support and for the use of his Amiga 1200, and Colin Etwell for the icon, documentation and beta testing on his 1.3 Amiga 500. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Author Details Stuart Davis 132 Rempstone Road Merley Wimborne Dorset BH21 1SX // England \X/ PC's are crap, Archimedes are amoebas, There's only one choice, And that's the Amiga... *****************************************************************