Abstract

O'Clock is a UTC (coordinated universal time) world clock. It displays time and date in 2 cities compared to local city. Quick-find cities from city time zone db with 374 cities. Time zone db was from www.rikconklin.com/adventure/timezone.html, (with an extra 14 cities added to supplement Canadian cities and add Afganistan and Cyprus).

Price

Freeware.

System Requirements

Any Palm device running Palm OS2 or higher. O'Clock is 78 kB and time zone database is 18 kB for a total of 96 kB. Also required is Rick Huebner's MathLib which is 56 kB. MathLib is included in this installation. If MathLib is not already on your Palm you'll need 152 kB free memory.

Program Operation

Main Screen

O'Clock uses the system time for local time. The main screen, displays local time and city at top, and large clock face of time and date in 2 other user selected time zones, on right and left.

Tip: To see a clock face of local time, select local city as your zone 1 or 2 city.

To select the local city

Tap the present local city. Shown is a list of 360 world cities. Select a new city in your local time zone by entering grafitti into Lookup textbox. When city is highlighted in selector, tap City. New city will be shown on main screen. Alternative is to tap cancel, and same city will be used.

To select zone 1 or zone 2 city

Tap the present zone 1 or zone 2 city. Select city same as explained for local city. New city, time, and date will be shown relative to local city.

To change local time

You use normal Prefs system applet.

Miscellaneous

Be patient with button response. You may need to tap buttons a little longer than you normally would, but otherwise your Palm will operate normally.

O'Clock does not support DST (daylight savings time, or sometimes called summer time). this is when various countries spring ahead 1 hour in spring and fall back an hour in the fall. If the rest of the world goes to DST at the same time you do, then this is not a problem. All UTC delta data is the same. The USA, Can, and EU all go to DST at the same time now, about 1st Sunday in April, at 2a, and last Sunday in October, at 2a. I believe JPN, AU/NZ do not go to DST, but I'm not sure. Should you want to add DST functionality to this program (assuming you have version with source code), or if you want to learn more about DST rules, a good site to start is www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm.

Install

Extract all files in oclock.zip file to folder of your choice.

On Win32 Systems: Run the install.bat program, which will guide you through the installation process.

On other computer systems (Mac, Linux, etc): There are 3 files that you need to Hotsync to your Palm: OClock.prc, MathLib.prc, and oclkZone.pdb. These files are in the folder ".\bin\". Use the Palm Install utilty, or whatever method you normally use, to install the 3 files to your Palm device.

Uninstall

The O'Clock time zone and preferences db's must first be deleted. You do this by using the O'Clock menu option "Delete DB", and confirm. Tap the Palm home silk screen button to exit O'Clock, before restarting O'Clock, delete O'Clock with the Palm delete applet. If no other programs are using, delete MathLib. On your PC, delete the OClock folder (and all files contained within). No other changes were made to your Palm device or PC.

Source Code

You do not need the source code to install and use O'Clock. It's provided only for you interested in seeing how easy it is to turn your ideas into PDA applications. All source code is contained in folder ".\source_code\". You can examine CSL, CPK, and CFF files with any text editor, such as NotePad. To modify OClock program, you'll need the CASLide development tool. The program stays within the demo normal CASL compiler limits, but does not stay in demo CASLpro compiler limits because there are 2 extra functions needed to handle use of MathLib. OClock.cpj is the project file.

You can get the free demo version of the CASLide at www.caslsoft.com.

Author

©2001 Feras Information Technologies, www.caslsoft.com, support@caslsoft.com. Distribution and use of this program is permitted for any purpose, provided you leave the FIT copyright notice, and you accept program "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.

MathLib

MathLib is a free shared library that can be used by any Palm OS2 program that needs IEEE 754 double precision math functions. It's distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and is freely available with full source code and documentation at the MathLib Information web page, www.radiks.net/~rhuebner/mathlib.html. It's not a part of the O'Clock program, and you're not paying anything for its use; a copy is simply included in this distribution for your convenience.