MiniTime 1.08 released

Version 1.08 of MiniTime is now available for download.

MiniTime is a small application that displays the date/time in a small icon or window. It was written as a replacement for SmallTime which does the same thing but doesn’t run on modern hardware and the licence doesn’t allow for altered versions to be distributed.

Changes in this version are:

• Now responds to the SaveDesktop message. This means that when saving the Desktop settings, MiniTime will insert a command to run itself.
   
• A new ‘button’ has been added at the top of the calendar that moves the calendar back to the present day. The ‘button’ is placed between the calendar month and year, and depicts an asterisk.
   
• The calendar cell with the present day can now be highlighted using a different font style (of the current Desktop font) in addition to the different colours option.
   
• The choices window gained a Revert button that can be used to easily go back to the settings stored in the Choices file. This provides a quick way to back out of changes made using the Apply button (though not the Save & Apply button).

MiniTime can be freely distributed under the 3-clause BSD licence, and comes with the source included. As always all feedback is welcome.

Feature request for MiniTime:

I have just put the rice maker on. I looked at MiniTime to see it’s half two, so I’ll go check it at around quarter past three.

Then I thought, wouldn’t it be useful if MiniTime had an option to prod me, something like this:

  [   Minitime    ]
  Info           ->
  -----------------
  Notify me in   ->  [  Notify me in  ]
  -----------------  Five minutes
  Help...            Ten minutes
  Choices...         Quarter hour
  -----------------  Half an hour
  Quit               After X minutes -> [ writeable icon ]

Optional:
Follow “After X minutes” with “At this time”, and a writable icon to accept an HH:MM time? But that would need parsing, plus dealing with AM/PM for those who don’t use the 24hr clock, which makes it that much more complex.

Then I thought, wouldn’t it be useful if MiniTime had an option to prod me, something like this:

Sounds like you’d want a little application that does alarms.What shall we call it?
How about !Alarm?

Or have we already got one called that?

Then I thought, wouldn’t it be useful if MiniTime had an option to prod me, something like this:

How would you like to be prodded? ;-) Sound, visual cue?
Anyway, I’ll consider it but as Steve says Alarm already does that.

It’s a very timely request though as I’m just finishing off some work on MiniTime. You can now choose from multiple colour schemes. The colour picker remembers the colour model. A colour field can be dragged to another colour field to copy its colour.

Then I thought, wouldn’t it be useful if MiniTime had an option to prod me

It is the only use I have found for Alexa.
“Alexa, set an alarm for 4 minutes”

How would you like to be prodded? ;-) Sound, visual cue?

Visual cue – I don’t often have the sound hook up to anything.

Given it’s me, how about black out the screen (apart from your message), lock the keyboard, and say “Go get the pie out of the oven NOW dammit, and not in fifty seven minutes when you finish doing whatever it is and suddenly remember there WAS a pie in the oven…”. ;-)

but as Steve says Alarm already does that.

Alarm also displays the time. :-)

Visual cue – I don’t often have the sound hook up to anything.

Should it be blocking or not, ie Wimp error box vs custom window?

Alarm also displays the time. :-)

Oh, you’re actually paying attention. ;-)
Anyway, point taken.

I have uploaded a temporary copy of MiniTime 1.09a which has basic notify support.

Note that this version has been rigged in two ways:

• It doesn’t use Choices to prevent it from altering your current configuration. When MiniTime 1.09 finds an old Choices it will split off the colours into a separate file. This makes switching colour schemes easier.

• Although the Notify window specifies minutes at the moment they are treated as seconds. This makes testing a bit quicker.

There’s more work to be done but hopefully this gives a good enough impression.

Edit: The temporary copy of MiniTime 1.09a has been removed. There’s been no feedback on the notify support so I suppose that can be removed as well?