TRAVEL CLOCK Version 1.03

Index

I wrote Travel Clock to assist travelers like me, who need to keep track of multiple time zones. This help file will explain how to set up Travel Clock to keep track of one (or more) time zones away from your home.

Setting Time Zones:

Setting Your Home Time Zone

Setting Your Travel Time Zone

Icon Commands:

Changing the Travel Clock Icon

General Information:

Menus

Registration

Technical Support

Amending the WIN.INI File


Home_Time
Setting Your Home Time Zone

This section tells how to set your Home time zone.

Click on the Travel Clock window with the right button.

The menu window pops up in the lower center of your screen. It looks like this:

Home Time

Travel Time

Help

Exit

About

Choose Home Time with the mouse or use the "T" keyboard accelerator.

This will pop up the time zone menu. Select the correct time zone either with the mouse, or the keyboard accelerator. For Travel Clock to operate properly, the Home Time zone should be consistent with your computer's internal clock.

Selecting this will set the Home time zone not only in memory, but also in the WIN.INI file


Menus

You activate the menu by clicking on the TRAVEL CLOCK window with the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. The first menu displays:

HomeTime

TravelTime

Help

Exit

About

To select a menu item, you can either select with the left mouse button or the keyboard accelerator key (underlined).

HomeTime lets you set the time zone that you computer's CMOS clock is set for. Selecting a time zone here will add an entry to your WIN.INI file under the [TravelClock] section.

TravelTime lets you select the time zone that you want to see in TRAVEL CLOCK's window. Selecting one of the time zones here will add an entry to your WIN.INI file.

SYSTEM MENU

To access the system menu, click on the TRAVEL CLOCK window with the left mouse button to give it focus, then push Alt + Space Bar. The system menu will pop up. It lists:

Restore

Move

Size

Minimize

Maximize

Close	Alt + F4

Switch To...	Ctrl + Esc

Run...

You can chose Move, and then use the cursor keys to place TRAVEL CLOCK anywhere on the screen.


Registration

To help me continue to develop more Applet's I need to convince my family that the time I spend in front of the computer is not totally unrewarding. Please help convince my spouse and children that those of us who develop Windows applications deserve some rewards for their efforts.

Therefore, please register this program by sending $US10, or the equivalent, to:

Brooks Hurd

5643 Tamarisk Way

San Luis Obispo, CA   93401-8277

U.S.A.

Registration will allow me to offer you future upgrades, as well as other Applets that I develop in the future.


Technical Support

TROUBLE SHOOTING

I have run TRAVEL CLOCK on many different computers, both desk tops and notebooks, without problems. TRAVEL CLOCK has run concurrently with many widely used applications, without problems. The applications which have been compatible are:

Microsoft® Excel 4.0

Microsoft Word for Windows™ 2.0

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Visual C++™ 1.0

Microsoft Quick C™ for Windows 1.0

Microsoft MS-DOS® 5.0

Microsoft MS-DOS 6.0, with DoubleSpace

Microsoft Windows 3.1

Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.1

Microsoft Visual Basic™ 3.0

Symantec™ Norton Desktop™ for Windows 2.0 and 2.2

Intuit's Quicken® for Windows 2.0

Approach™ for Windows 1.0 and 2.03

CompuServe® WinCim 1.03 and 1.04

Delrina™ WinFax™ Lite

CorelDraw® 3.0

ChipSoft's TurboTax® for Windows

Hewlett-Packard New Wave

Hewlett-Packard Dashboard™

Please let me know what other applications either are or are not compatible with Travel Clock.

I have not found any bugs in this release. TRAVEL CLOCK should not cause GPF's. If you experience any bugs, please let me know what occurred

SERVICE and UPGRADES

If you have any questions about, or problems with TRAVEL CLOCK, please call me at (805) 545-8611 or contact me on CompuServe (73670,2730), A T & T® Easylink (62068604), or America On Line (b hurd). You can also reach me by mail:

Brooks Hurd

5643 Tamarisk Way

San Luis Obispo, CA   93401-8277

U.S.A.

International Time/Date Settings

The window will display the international date and time formats that you have selected in CONTROL PANEL. If the short date is set to DMY, and the time is set to 12 hours in CONTROL PANEL, the display will be:

If the short date is set to MDY and the time is set to 24 hours, the display will be:

 Any changes to the CONTROL PANEL settings will be picked up by TRAVEL CLOCK as soon as you click "OK" to confirm them.

Technical Information

This program's window is loosely based on Charles Petzold's DIGCLOCK, from his excellent book Programming Windows 3.1.

This program does handle the time zones, such as India, where the difference from Coordinated Universal Time is not an even hour. This version of the program does not handle Daylight Savings Time yet. I'm working on adding this feature for the next version.

I wrote TRAVEL CLOCK in Microsoft Quick C for Windows Version 1.0. The program occupies 21,216 bytes of memory, of which 10,240 is discardable (per Norton DeskTop for Windows 2.2, System Information). By comparison, the Windows CLOCK applet takes up 20,800 bytes of memory. The development computers were a Belmont 486DX33 desktop with 4 MB RAM, and 120 MB hard drive; and a Dell™ 320SLi notebook with 10 MB RAM and a 120 MB hard drive.

Microsoft and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Windows, QuickC, Visual Basic, and Visual C++, are trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Symantec and Norton Desktop are trademarks of the Symantec Corporation. Quicken is registered trademark of Intuit. Approach is a trademark of the Approach Software Corporation. CompuServe is a registered trademark of CompuServe Incorporated. CorelDRAW is a registered trademark of Corel Corporation. Delrina and WinFax are trademarks of Delrina Technology, Inc. Dashboard is a trademark of the Hewlett-Packard Company. TurboTax is a registered trademark of ChipSoft CA, Corporation. Dell is a trademark of the Dell Computer Corporation. A T & T is a registered trademark of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.


Amending the WIN.INI File

After you have run TRAVEL CLOCK and selected both a HomeTime and a TravelTime, TRAVEL CLOCK will start up with the last time zone you selected. It does this by adding lines to your WIN.INI file. TRAVEL CLOCK will only alter its own section of WIN.INI. The WIN.INI section is [TravelClock]. The entries for a computer set for Pacific Time and reading the time in Seoul, Korea are:

HomeTZ=-8

StringConst=Pacific

AwayTZ=9

StringConstT=Korea

PlusMinutes=0

The numbers after HomeTZ and AwayTZ indicate the difference between the selected time zones and Coordinated Universal Time. In this case, Korea is 9 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time, and Pacific Standard Time is 8 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time. Subtracting (-8) from 9 gives +17 hours from Pacific Standard Time to Korean time.  The PlusMinutes entry gives the time zone's deviation (if any) from an even hour difference with Coordinated Universal Time. In this case "0" minutes means that the time zone is an even hour.

The first time you run TRAVEL CLOCK, since there is no entry in your WIN.INI file, it will default to the setting of your computer's CMOS clock. All settings have a default value. After you set up TRAVEL CLOCK, it writes to its section of the WIN.INI file.


Setting Your Travel Time Zone

This section tells how to set the Travel Time Zone.

Click on the Travel Clock window with the right button.

The menu window pops up in the lower center of your screen. It looks like this:

Home Time

Travel Time

Help

Exit

About

Choose Travel Time with the mouse or use the "v" keyboard accelerator.

This will pop up the time zone menu. Select the correct time zone either with the mouse, or the keyboard accelerator.

Selecting this will set the Travel time zone not only in memory, but also in the WIN.INI file


Icon Change
Changing the Travel Clock Icon

This area describes how to change an icon. Travel Clock comes with a number of icons that resemble various national flags. I have made the attempt to have at least one flag per time zone. If I have missed any time zones, please contact me on CompuServe 73670,2730, A T & T Easylink 62068604, or America On Line (b hurd).

To change the icon, single click on the current Travel Clock icon to activate the icon's pop-up menu. The pop-up menu will look like this:

Open

Properties...

Close

Select Properties. This will bring up the Properties Dialog Box. The currently selected icon will be in the upper left hand corner of this dialog box. There are 2 edit boxes: "Title:" and "Program/Document/Script:." There are 6 buttons on the right side. They are:

OK

Cancel

Icon...

Options...

Browse...

Help

Select Icon... This will bring up the "Choose Icon" dialog box. There should be one icon displayed in the Icon(s) selection box. Select the "Browse..." button.

This will bring up the "Select an icon source file" dialog box. In the "Tree" list box you should see the directory where you have the Travel Clock files. If not, then select the correct directory in this list box. NOTE: You may get a dialog box that states that there are no other icons associated with this file. Although this is correct, if you unzipped all the files into a single directory, there will be many different icons from which to choose. Each one represents the flag of a different country.

The "Files" list box will display all the files in this directory. To change to a new icon, select your choice and click "OK". This brings back the "Choose Icon" dialog box. Click "OK." This brings back the "Properties" dialog box. Click "OK."

Your new icon is now active. To make this change permanent, you must exit Windows normally. If you re-boot or switch off the power, the old icon will be active the next time you re-start Windows. Windows writes changes to its initialization files when you exit the program. Until you exit all changes are temporary. They will work for the current session, but Windows will not "remember" them until you exit normally.


Travel

This is the time zone where you are traveling to. The time on the Travel Clock display will display the local time, if both Home and Travel times are set. The calculation is based on the difference between the local time zone and Coordinated Universal Time (formerly referred to as Greenwich Mean Time [also GMT or Zulu]).

Once your travel time zone is entered, the [TRAVEL CLOCK] section of WIN.INI is either created or revised to remember the travel time zone. It also adds an entry to show if this time zone is not an even number of hours different from Coordinated Universal Time (PlusMinutes). This means that you only do not need to re-set travel time unless you want to change time zones.


Home

This is the time zone where your computer clock is set. The time on the CLOCK applet in Windows Accessories will read this time. Setting your home time zone is required for Travel Clock to calculate the new time. The calculation is based on the difference between your home time zone and Coordinated Universal Time (formerly referred to as Greenwich Mean Time [also GMT or Zulu]).

Once your home time zone is entered, the [TRAVEL CLOCK] section of WIN.INI is either created or revised to remember the home time zone. This means that you only need to set home time once.


Icon

The icon is the bit mapped symbol displayed in the Program Manager Window [or on the NDW desktop]. The Travel Clock icon can be changed like any other icon by selecting properties on the icon's pop-up menu.


WIN.INI

According to the Microsoft Windows Resource Kit, the WIN.INI file "...consists of a group of related entries that you can use to customize the Windows environment....many Windows applications add entries in WIN.INI to define user preferences and other items."


Coordinated Universal Time

This time was formerly referred to as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. It is also called Zulu. This is the time in the British Isles except during the Daylight Savings months.