Atari Themed Clock face - chimes, alarms and mouse fix

[wongck]

I have created a program (for MINT) that display a clock on the desktop, the clock face being a graphic file like the one below.

I have only 2 such graphic file in the download.
So if anyone creates a couple or know of where I can "copy" more nice Atari graphic, to be included in my program, let me know.

The graphic file is in PNG format, can be 32 bits colour and is 120x 120 pixel wide.
The program download is located at my webpage program download page.

[nativ]

Wong (clo) CK



this will work right from 32 bit down to mono? I might have a go at some backgrounds!

[MadMax2023]

i didn't know this download page

Thanks i am going to try your programs tomorrow. Looks great and seems very useful! I am seeing there will be a map software, excellent

[wongck]

Wong (clo) CK

this will work right from 32 bit down to mono? I might have a go at some backgrounds!

oops, I did not do any testing on mono mode. Only did up to 256 colours.
On lower colours, I think the dithering will be so bad that it will "cloud" up the designs.

[wongck]

:D i didn't know this download page

Thanks i am going to try your programs tomorrow. Looks great and seems very useful! I am seeing there will be a map software, excellent

well, now you do.
The map software is partially working, as in that it crashes on 10-15 maps ( 3-4 if satellite /hybrid maps). I traced the crashes into the JPG library that I am using. May be I am using it in a way it is not suppose to, I do not know. I tried to use PNG library and it was the same.
If it is in the LIB, I can do nothing to fix it.

[paul92706]

hi wongck im having a problem loading PHClock and PHWeather, i get "Can't init the codec.... exiting" type error hmmm ??? im running Mint 1-18/MyAes

[MadMax2023]

I guess ldg codecs are not installed.
Have a look to the zview installation guide (readme text) to know how to do.

[Cyprian]

I have created a program (for MINT) that display a clock on the desktop, the clock face being a graphic file like the one below.

I have only 2 such graphic file in the download.
So if anyone creates a couple or know of where I can "copy" more nice Atari graphic, to be included in my program, let me know.

The graphic file is in PNG format, can be 32 bits colour and is 120x 120 pixel wide.
The program download is located at my webpage program download page.

wow, really cool

[wongck]

hi wongck im having a problem loading PHClock and PHWeather, i get "Can't init the codec.... exiting" type error hmmm ??? im running Mint 1-18/MyAes

Well, look under the requirements section of the doc.
It should indicate that it needs zView Codecs. You can download zView from here.
It's the same URL as in the doc.

I see I had an error in my instructions... it's telling you to run phweathr.prg instead. You can see that I just adapt my docs.
The instructions in the doc should be as follows:

1 Extract and copy all the files into a folder of your choice. For example d:\phclock.
2 Make sure that the IMG subfolder is created inside the folder. For example d:\phclock\img.
3 Make sure that the PNG images are inside this IMG folder.
4 Copy all zView codecs into C:\GEMSYS\LDG\CODECS folder. Create that folder if you do not already have it.
5 Copy the zView MEM.LDG into C:\GEMSYS\LDG\ folder.
6 Double click phclock.prg to run it !!

have fun....

[jfl]

I have created a program (for MINT) that display a clock on the desktop, the clock face being a graphic file like the one below.

A day with new Atari software is always a good day! I tried a couple of your apps and I have a few comments:
- none can be run from an ext2 partition (not a big problem, since I install all my programs on a FAT partition).
- PHclock and PHweather work beautifully (no flicker whatsoever in PHclock ). Also, I noticed that the hands keep updating even when I'm moving another window. This is the kind of well-designed application I like.
- Synctime does not work with memory protection. When I click the Upgrade button it initiates a memory violation.
- How do you get the time for PHclock? I have a 2 hours offset from the system time.
- You should publicize you work more! I had no ideas you had programmed such cool utilities.

[wongck]

A day with new Atari software is always a good day! I tried a couple of your apps and I have a few comments:

Great to get some comments. Good or bad. Thanks !!

- none can be run from an ext2 partition (not a big problem, since I install all my programs on a FAT partition).

It did run from my ext2 partition. I wonder why it did not. Probably I did not do a pdomain() on it. I am lazy. Do I need to do that?

PHclock and PHweather work beautifully (no flicker whatsoever in PHclock ). Also, I noticed that the hands keep updating even when I'm moving another window. This is the kind of well-designed application I like.

Yeap, I had optimised the drawing of the clock so it should flicker very less or almost can't see ( but should still be there for slow machine, but on my TT it is not flickering). Only GEM envent and VDI used. No bad hacks or timer stealing. Sometimes, the seconds skip a few seconds, that's because GEM did not return to the app every seconds (timer is set to 1 sec so that it does not load the system too much).

Synctime does not work with memory protection. When I click the Upgrade button it initiates a memory violation.

I don't use memory protection on my system.... sorry did not check that at all.
I am not too surprise because it uses tfork as mentioned in another thread. May be that needs some memory settings.

How do you get the time for PHclock? I have a 2 hours offset from the system time.

For the clock I am just using standard Unix style localtime()

Code: Select all

mytime = time(NULL); timedata = localtime(&mytime);

You're are at CET which is summer now, should be 2 hrs ahead of UTC.
Did you set up time zone information ?
Did you do a tzinit -l or tzinit -utc on your startup ?

- You should publicize you work more! I had no ideas you had programmed such cool utilities.

Well, been coding on the Atari since late 80s..... and now you know.

[jfl]

- none can be run from an ext2 partition (not a big problem, since I install all my programs on a FAT partition).

It did run from my ext2 partition. I wonder why it did not. Probably I did not do a pdomain() on it. I am lazy. Do I need to do that?

Frankly, I've never quite understood the use of Pdomain(), but the fact is that I do call it in my programs and they run from anywhere.

Synctime does not work with memory protection. When I click the Upgrade button it initiates a memory violation.

I don't use memory protection on my system.... sorry did not check that at all.
I am not too surprise because it uses tfork as mentioned in another thread. May be that needs some memory settings.

Synctime does not crash itself, so it looks like the thread is (if that's possible?).

How do you get the time for PHclock? I have a 2 hours offset from the system time.

For the clock I am just using standard Unix style localtime()

Code: Select all

mytime = time(NULL); timedata = localtime(&mytime);

You're are at CET which is summer now, should be 2 hrs ahead of UTC.
Did you set up time zone information ?
Did you do a tzinit -l or tzinit -utc on your startup ?

I have to admit that my time settings are a mess. I tried with -utc and the clock displays the correct time. Tasbar doesn't, though. Never understood that stuff.

A few other comments:
- I didn't notice you can change the image from the menu in PHclock. Very nice touch. I may have a go at designing something.
- Both PHclock and PHweather provoque a memory violation when quitting (the config file is saved, though). It reminds me of a same issue zView had and was later fixed.
- I like the fact you can't go beyond the screen coordinates when moving PHclock and PHweather. It makes it easier to place them right in the corner without fiddling.

Thanks for the good work!

[paul92706]

thanks wongck i got PHclock to run, but upon running i get "Error getting object tree" about 3 times after clicking ok on the alert message then she loads up fine! ??? any answers on this? same goes with PHweather. kindly thanks

[MadMax2023]

i installed Phclock and phweather, but i get me too lot of messages "error getting object tree".
After 3 messages the clock displays, but about the weather app it didn't work.

[paul92706]

i installed Phclock and phweather, but i get me too lot of messages "error getting object tree".
After 3 messages the clock displays, but about the weather app it didn't work.

same here i cant get PHweather to work

[MadMax2023]

In fact it launches but it is impossible to set a town or anything with this error message pop up.
I hope wong knows how to resolve this issue.

[paul92706]

i cant even get it to launch.

[wongck]

Ok, I will try pdomain() and see what's happens.
Like I said, it does run from ext2 on my systems.... Falcon & TT, so I do not know what it is.

In SyncTIme, the thread is accessing the parent's memory. So that's explains it.
It was an experimental bit from me as timeout or even network lag hangs the program. I did not put this threading into PHweather, I was planning later on. May not now that I know it crashes.

If you use tzinit -utc, it tells Mint that localtime() == gmtime() i.e. both all time is in UTC and your hardware clock is in UTC.
Normally I set my time in TOS, which set hardware clock as my local time.
Then in Mint (which runs in UTC), I set my timezone and then tell MInt that my hardware clock is local mode by tzinit -l.
If I do not do that, Mint will think that my local time is the UTC time.
This was the issue with all other NTP time setting program - they all thinks that Mint is running at UTC only.

Unfortunately, all flaws of zView are also inherited
I do not know how to solve it.... well we have to see.

[wongck]

i installed Phclock and phweather, but i get me too lot of messages "error getting object tree".
After 3 messages the clock displays, but about the weather app it didn't work.

Ok guys I will have a look at this. Runs fine on my CTPCI.
Thanks for the feedback.

[wongck]

You can overwrite phweathr.cfg with this one.
It's define for orlando, florida as the city.
You should be able to change the cite by editing this file.
The city is at the last section after the | character.

phweathr.zip

Change the zip to cfg. The forum did not allow me to upload a cfg file.
This is just a text file.

[jfl]

Unfortunately, all flaws of zView are also inherited
I do not know how to solve it.... well we have to see.

That bug was fixed in the latest release of zView. I don't remember though if the bug was in zView itself or one of its libraries. This was discussed on the mintlist a while ago.

[wongck]

In fact it launches but it is impossible to set a town or anything with this error message pop up.
I hope wong knows how to resolve this issue.

Looks like it cannot load the RSC file.
Can you please use a GEMDOS partition like your C: drive ?
Thanks.

[wongck]

Unfortunately, all flaws of zView are also inherited
I do not know how to solve it.... well we have to see.

That bug was fixed in the latest release of zView. I don't remember though if the bug was in zView itself or one of its libraries. This was discussed on the mintlist a while ago.

Ok Thanks I will look at the mintlist archives.

I place my Atari into memory protection mode and reproduced the crashed.
I traced the bug to within the LDG libraries... which I was afraid of. I suspected there may be some memory malloc issue with the mem.ldg module.
( it was crashing my google map app, there were lots of creating & destroying graphics in it so I suspected memory leaks)
And this tracing confirms it as it happens during unloading of the memory module which was the last function my program called.

This is real bad, since the LDG framework was suppose to be used without any knowledge of the internals by a user like me.
Now I have to debug this without knowing how the architecture of LDG works.... which means something impossible.

I wonder if I can just replace all the LDG malloc with the standard unix malloc.... worth a try.

[jfl]

I traced the bug to within the LDG libraries... which I was afraid of. I suspected there may be some memory malloc issue with the mem.ldg module.

Make sure you have the absolute latest version of LDG. I'm almost certain this has been fixed.

[wongck]

The version mem.ldg on webpage is v0.5 which is the version I am using.
On sourceforge, the mem module have not been touch in 6 years.
So if someone patched it, that version is not readily available.