Copyright (c) 2002 DeskSoft
http://www.desksoft.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
1. Overview
1.1 Main Features
1.2 System Requirements
1.3 Installation & Uninstallation
1.4 Registration
1.5 License Agreement
1.6 Contacting DeskSoft
2. Getting Started
3. The Main Window
3.1 City bar
3.2 Map area
3.3 Info bar
3.4 Tray icon
4. Options
5. Cities
6. Alarms
7. Adding Cities and Countries
1. Overview
EarthTime displays the local time and date of any place in the world. It has a built-in database of more than 3000 cities worldwide but users can add any number of custom locations. Alarms can be set on the local time of any city in the world. Many options allow flexible customization.
1.1 Main Features
* Locations of more than 3000 Cities with local time and date
* Alarms for any place in the world
* View of the earth at day and night
* Many options for full customization
1.2 System Requirements
*) Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP or higher
*) 1 MB of free hard-disk space
1.3 Installation & Uninstallation
To install EarthTime, simply run "ETSetup.exe". The Setup program will guide you through all necessary steps. If you want to remove EarthTime from your computer, select "Uninstall" from the EarthTime program group or use "Add/Remove Software" in the Windows Control Panel.
1.4 Registration
For pricing information (single user and site licenses), order conditions and information about how to register your copy of EarthTime online, please visit our web site. After ordering the product you will receive your personal license via email.
IMPORTANT: Please keep a copy of your license at a safe place, because we can not replace it if it gets lost!
1.5 License Agreement
You may evaluate the program for a maximum of thirty days, after which you must register it or discontinue its use. You may allow other users to evaluate copies of the unregistered demo. All evaluation users are subject to the terms of this agreement.
Neither DeskSoft nor anyone else involved in creating, producing or delivering EarthTime is responsible for any damages whatsoever, including loss of information, interruption of business, personal injury and/or any damage or consequential damage without limitation, incurred before, during or after the use of our products. If, for some reason, anyone is found liable in respect of any matter, the liability in respect of any claim or loss shall be limited to the amount paid by the Customer for the software.
Each registered copy of EarthTime may be used in only one single location by one user. Use of the software means that you have loaded the program and run it or have installed the program onto a computer. If you install the software onto a multi-user platform or network, you must have a site license or each and every individual user of the software must be registered separately.
You may make one copy of the registered software for backup purposes, providing you only have one copy installed on one computer being used by one person. If any person other than yourself uses a registered EarthTime in your name, regardless of whether it is at the same time or different times, then this agreement is being violated!
The sale of and or distribution of registered copies or licenses of this software is strictly forbidden. It is a violation of this agreement to loan, rent, lease, borrow, or transfer the use of registered copies or licenses.
Furthermore, you may not extract or copy images produced by EarthTime for any purpose! All images produced by EarthTime are subject to the copyright of DeskSoft and must not be used by any other application or program than EarthTime .
1.6 Contacting DeskSoft
If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to send us an email or visit our website:
Web:
http://www.desksoft.comEmail:
support@desksoft.comIf you experience any problems running the program, please send us a detailed description and please make sure to include information about your computer configuration, hardware and software.
2. Getting started
When EarthTime is started for the first time, it will display some default cities. You can edit this list if you want to choose different cities or add some. To edit the list of displayed cities, select "Cities..." from the "Edit" menu. Alarms can be defined with "Alarms..." which also can be found in the "Edit" menu. To adjust global program parameters, select "Options..." Usage of the program is simple and self-explanatory. The following paragraphs will give you an overview and an explanation of the features.
3. The Main Window
The main window consists of several parts:
3.1 City bar
The city bar displays the local times of all selected cities. A maximum of 16 cities can be displayed at the same time, if they fit in the available space. If the cities exceed the width of one row, a second row will be displayed (below the map of the earth). Clicking a city will put the focus on it and the info bar at the bottom will display detailed information about the city. If you double-click a city, a dialog will open where you can choose which cities to display.
3.2 Map Area
The map area displays the map of the earth and the current day/night areas. If a city is selected and has the focus, the map area will display the location of the selected city. You can show or hide the map with the menu item "View -> World map".
3.3 Info bar
The info bar displays detailed information about the selected city. This includes city name, country, position, local time and date.
3.4 Tray icon
Left-clicking the tray icon will display the main dialog. Right-clicking shows a context menu, with all important actions.
4. Options
Selecting the menu item "Edit -> Options..." will display the main program options. The first group contains general options:
Start with Windows: if this option is selected, EarthTime will be automatically started at Windows startup and it will be minimized to the system tray.
Map offset: here you can specify an offset for the map in degrees (-180 to +180). It will shift the world map so that any region of the world can be in the middle of the window. By default, longitude 0° (Europe and Africa) will be in the center.
Focus rotation: EarthTime can rotate the focus automatically at given time intervals. With this option, you can set this interval. Default is 3 seconds.
Time format: You can choose between the European time format (24 hours, e.g. 15:30) and the American time format (AM/PM, e.g. 03:30 pm).
Date format: You can choose between the European date format (day.month.year, e.g. 15.03.2002) and the American date format (month/day/year, e.g. 03/15/2002).
Time bias: this is a very delicate parameter - use it with care! It shifts the time for the given amount of minutes (+ or -). It should only be set to a value different than 0 if ALL the times of all displayed cities are early or late for the same amount of time. This could be the case if your operating system doesn't report the Universal Coordinated Time correctly, which should normally not be the case. If only one displayed city shows an incorrect time, please correct the city description (see below) or send us an email.
The "Colors" group is used to set the colors of the city boxes. Simply double-click the color boxes to set a new color value.
The "Alarms" group defines the way an alarm is announced. To display a message box, please select Show message box. To play a sound, check Play sound. It's recommended to use both ways of signaling the alarm.
5. Cities
Selecting the menu item "Edit -> Cities..." will show the cities dialog, which is used to define the list of displayed cities. The Country list shows all available countries and the City list includes all defined cities in the selected country. To add a city to the list of displayed cities, simply double-click the city or press Add. Removing a city from the display list is done by selecting the city and pressing Remove. You can change the order of the displayed cities by using the Up and Down buttons. A maximum of 16 cities can be displayed at the same time. If the cities don't fit in one row, a second row will be shown below the world map. If a city doesn't fit in that second row either, it will not be displayed!
6. Alarms
Selecting the menu item "Edit -> Alarms..." will show the alarms dialog, which is used to define alarms. The list Active alarms shows all currently defined alarms. The Add, Edit and Remove buttons are used to edit this list. To define a new alarm, press Add. This will bring up a dialog to define all necessary parameters for the alarm. First of all, you must select a city for which the alarms should be valid. The time and date details you specify will be in local time of that city! The alarm definitions system of EarthTime is very flexible. It offers a lot of possibilities to set alarms on various events.
Time: here you can set the time for the alarm. You can either specify a complete time value (hour and minute) or leave one of the fields empty. in this case, the value of this field will be ignored. E.g. if you only specify 0 for the minutes and leave the hours empty, the alarm will sound every full hour. If you only set an hour and leave the minutes empty, the alarm will sound every minute in the given hour.
Date: this group defines the date for the alarm. Again, you can either set all 3 values (day, month, year) or leave some of them empty. If you leave the day field empty, the alarm will be set to every day of the specified month (and year if you set one). If you choose a day and leave the month empty, the alarm will be raised at that day every month.
Weekday: the weekday group gives you the possibility to limit the alarm to certain weekdays. Simply check all the weekdays for which the alarm should apply.
Message: you can specify a custom message here, which will be included in the alarm message box. It can be used as a reminder.
The alarm system is enormously flexible. Here are some examples of how it can be used (the "--" means, that the field should be left empty!):
To set an alarm to 15:30 on 23.08.2002, use these values:
Time: 15:30
Date: 23.08.2002
Weekday: --
To set an alarm on every Friday the 13th, use these values (the time 00:00 will cause the alarm to be displayed only once on Friday the 13th, when EarthTime is started for the first time on that day):
Time: 00:00
Date: 13.--.----
Weekday: Friday
To set an alarm on every Monday and Thursday in February at noon:
Time: 12:00
Date: --.February.----
Weekday: Monday, Thursday
7. Adding Cities and Countries
EarthTime has a built-in database of more than 3000 cities worldwide. Country capitals are written in all capital letters and the state capitals of the states of the USA have a "*" appended to the name. To allow best possible flexibility for every user, this list can be extended and existing items can be changed. The city and country information is located in two files, "Cities.txt" and "Countries.txt", which can be found in the EarthTime installation folder (the directory, where the main program is, e.g. C:\Program Files\EarthTime). Here's an explanation of both files:
"Countries.txt":
This file describes all countries, their time offset (relative to Universal Time Coordinated UTC) and if they observe daylight saving. All parameters are separated by semicolons. The first parameter is a time zone number, which must be unique. Some countries have more than one time zone, and so they appear multiple times in the list (with different time zone numbers). The second item is the name of the country. The third parameter is the time offset to UTC in hours. Parameter number four describes, if the country (or more exactly, the time zone number) is observing daylight saving. Set it to 0 if not or 1 if daylight saving has to be considered. If the latter is the case, two more parameters must follow: the start and the end of daylight saving time. The format is as follows:
ONDDMM or FxDDMM or LxDDMM
where:
ON means, that daylight saving will start (or end) on the day described by DDMM.
Fx means, that daylight saving will start (or end) on the first weekday x (values for x are: 0=Sunday, 1=Monday, ... 6=Saturday) on or after DDMM.
Lx means, that daylight saving will start (or end) on the last weekday x (values for x are: 0=Sunday, 1=Monday, ... 6=Saturday) on or after DDMM.
DD is the day of the month MM, both always with two digits. E.g. the 3rd of April is 0304.
Example:
L00103 means the last Sunday on or after 1st of March, which is simply the last Sunday of March (the start of daylight saving in Europe).
Since daylight saving times and the exact dates change from year to year, please check if the details are correct for your country. If not, you can simply correct them by editing the text file and restarting EarthTime. You can also add a new time zone if none of the given ones describe your area correctly, by simply adding a line to the file. Please make sure to use a unique time zone number. There are enough free numbers for every country and for countries not in the list.
Cities.txt":
This file describes the cities, their time zones and their positions. The file only contains those cities, which are not included in the internal database of EarthTime, so you can add your own entries here. Again, the parameters are separated by semicolons: the first parameter is a unique city id. You can use numbers starting at 5000. The second parameter is the city name, the third one is the time zone (which must be one of the time zones in the country list), followed by longitude and latitude of the city (the position of the city on earth, north and west are positive, south and east negative). For a list of cities and places worldwide, please visit the Global Gazetteer or Astrodienst. There you'll find position information about almost every place in the world. Please keep in mind, that EarthTime doesn't accept position information in the form of Degree-Minute-Second (which is given at most sites), but simply a decimal number (with "." as the comma character). The conversion is: n = degrees + minutes / 60 + seconds / 3600.
By adding entries in the given format to the Cities.txt file, you can add your hometown or any other places of interest. If an entry of the internal database seems incorrect, you can simply correct it by adding it to the text file by
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الإثنين مايو 05, 2008 5:19 pm