world time clock

Is anyone aware of a RISC OS app for showing world times? I am setting up a Zoom session for practicing speaking spanish. The potential participants are spread accross different time zones and it would be good to have a visual reminder on screen of what time it is where when writing emails and planning.
I don’t want to use Alarm because it is what I use to see the time here.

Is anyone aware of a RISC OS app for showing world times?

Paul Marshall’s WorldTime? It’s still available via the Wayback Machine (the download link there has also been archived).

I use a little app called ZoneTime by Mike Ironmonger. It’s in BASIC and the first few lines say:

REM Program   ZoneTime

REM Version   A1.0

REM Author    Mike Ironmonger

REM RISC User September 1991

REM           A.G.G. 9.2.94

REM Program   Subject to copyright

It pops up a small window for each location you require showing the curremnt time & date there. It does assume everywhere changes their clocks at the same time as us though.

Thanks Steve I have downloaded WorldTime it seems to do what I want.
Andrew Zone Time sounds interesting also but a cursory Google search does not show any sign of it. Any idea if it is still available?

Sorry, no idea. I posted the info in the hope someone else might know, otherwise it’s more abandonware :(

Any idea if it is still available?

It’s on the Nutshell CD in the disc for Volume 4, Issue 9.

Edit: Except, confusingly it’s called WorldTime there and the A.G.G. 9.2.94 comment isn’t in the header. That was September 1991, so perhaps there was a reboot somewhere else in 1994, with a non-clashing name¹? Does “A.G.G” mean anything to anyone?

¹ That’s why you register your application names, folks…

Except, confusingly it’s called WorldTime

The version on the RISC User vol 4 issue 9 subscriber disc has a rather unfortunate bug:

All times (except London) are 1 hour adrift. For example, on first start-up, London and Paris are shown as the same time. Opening a new window for Algiers (which is supposed to be the same time as London) shows it as 1 hour behind. My suspicion is that the program is hardwired for London to be on BST not GMT (the help file does mention that it makes no attempt to handle Daylight Saving Time).

It looks like Andrew has a later version with the “time offset” bug fixed.

(For the record, APDL disc B268 has a program called !WorldTime, but that’s the one by Karen Glover)

It looks like Andrew has a later version with the “time offset” bug fixed.

Hmm, I just went through trying various cities and comparing them with what Google told me the time there was, and some are right, some are wrong! It shows Paris, correctly, as being 1hr ahead of London. For Sydney it shows the time as 2hrs behind the actual time there now. Odd. It basically works from a config file which lists cities and what the time there is at 12.00 London time, as far as I can see, so easily edited to correct any simple mistakes.

My TimeZones application list the time for every time zone and the difference from GMT time.

My TimeZones application list the time for every time zone and the difference from GMT time.

Thanks Kevin that works for me

For Sydney it shows the time as 2hrs behind the actual time there now

That’s because the UK is currently on GMT, Sydney is on summer time.
In a couple of months the UK will put its clocks 1 hour forward and Australia 1 hour back.
Hence the 2 hour discrepancy!

Keeping track of local time around the world is a non-trivial undertaking. I remember once being asked a quiz question about how many time zones there are. The answer given was 24. I knew this was wrong, and I looked it up on Wikipedia. The answer then was 39. Looking it up again today, I see it has decreased to 38. The zones span UTC-12:00 to UTC+14:00, so there are zones that are on the same time but different days. There are some zones that are off by 15, 30 or 45 minutes. There is one zone where the DST offset is 30 minutes rather than 60.

And, of course, getting the changeover to be seen in an application, synchronised to when it happens in the zone itself, is yet another challenge.

Good luck to anyone attempting it.

My suspicion is that the program is hardwired for London to be on BST not GMT (the help file does mention that it makes no attempt to handle Daylight Saving Time).

Yes, isn’t it a terrible shame that there’s nothing in the OS that can say “hey, it’s summer time”?

The answer given was 24. I knew this was wrong

https://www.seikowatches.com/instructions/html/SEIKO_7B62_7B72_EN/BONDSYmfdsbfps

It makes scant reference to the unusual-offset timezones at the end, but doesn’t seem to count them as normal timezones, perhaps because their fancy watches can only cope with offsets that are whole hours.

Yes, isn’t it a terrible shame that there’s nothing in the OS that can say “hey, it’s summer time”?

To be fair, at the time when the original WorldTime and WorldTime were released, there either wasn’t, or only just was.

Paul Marshall’s WorldTime went through two iterations, for RISC OS 2 and RISC OS 3: the latter correctly using the new ability to handle DST. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other WorldTime (or ZoneTime) didn’t have a similar evolution.

Keeping track of local time around the world is a non-trivial undertaking. I remember once being asked a quiz question about how many time zones there are. The answer given was 24. I knew this was wrong, and I looked it up on Wikipedia. The answer then was 39. Looking it up again today, I see it has decreased to 38. The zones span UTC-12:00 to UTC+14:00, so there are zones that are on the same time but different days. There are some zones that are off by 15, 30 or 45 minutes. There is one zone where the DST offset is 30 minutes rather than 60.

On top of that, you have to get them right!

I was going to suggest Python which has pretty good timezone support, but a quick attempt at installing the dateutil module fails on RISC OS.

the dateutil module fails on RISC OS.

Hi Dave – it works here. the following code correctly prints the delta of two dates : 36

# Calculate with dates
#
from datetime import date
f_date = date(2020, 3, 13)
l_date = date(2020, 4, 18)
delta =l_date - f_date
print(delta.days)
# print('the end')

I haven’t tried to get the following linked Python code working, but I kept it bookmarked, and thought in this context it might be useful.

https://mike632t.wordpress.com/2021/05/29/analogue_clock/

datetime != dateutil, John!

datetime != dateutil, John!

Duh! must read more carefully.