World Time A.0.4 Release Notes Written By Dan Hallock General Do you have to call people in other parts of the world frequently? With the WorldTime program, you can check the time in the city you are calling before you call. This Windows program will display the current time for your location (based on your PC's clock), the Greenwich Median time (GMT), and the time for any city you select. There is no copyright on this program. You are free to do with it whatever you wish, and give to whoever you wish. I only ask that you do not change it. This is a pretty simple-minded program, I doubt too much can go wrong with it; however, if you find an error please feel free to let me know. Dan Hallock CIS: 71760,3027 Topics in this file Installation Configuration Operation Using the City Editor GMT Offsets Day Light Savings Incorrect Times LAN Operation Installation ------------ This program was written in Visual Basic which means you must have VBRUN100.DLL in your PATH (put it in \windows\system if you're not sure). You can find VBRUN100.DLL in the WINADV forum on Compuserve. I did not include it in my zip file so that you don't have to pay to download it if you already have it. The files TIMEZONE.EXE and TIMEZONE.DAT should be copied to the same directory. You may copy them to a new directory, or to an existing directory. The file TIMEZONE.DAT MUST be in the same directory as TIMEZONE.EXE. TIMEZONE.DAT contains cities by their names. If you wish to use airport codes instead (JFK instead of New York), copy TIMEZONE.APT to TIMEZONE.DAT. Once you have the files in the directory of your choosing, do the following: Select the group in Program Manager where you want to place the World Time program. From the Program Manager menu, select File then New. The "New Program Object" window will open. Select "Program Item" and then click on "OK". In the "Program Item Properties" field, enter any description you wish such as "World Time". In the command line field, enter the fully qualified program name, for example "C:\TIMEZONE\TIMEZONE.EXE". In the "Working Directory" field, enter the path to the program such as C:\TIMEZONE. Click on OK. The World Time icon will now appear in the selected group. Double click on the World Time icon to start the program. Configuration ------------- After starting World Time for the first time, you should go into the SETUP window to configure the program. If you are in the United States, setup is very simple. Select the Time Zone you are in: Eastern (EST), Central (CST), Mountain (MST) or Pacific (PST). If Daylight Savings is in effect (mid-Spring to mid-Fall), turn on Daylight Savings. If you are not in one of the four listed time zones, then you need to enter the correct GMT offset. The easiest way to do this is to go to the editor, find your city and its GMT, then return to SETUP and enter the GMT. For example, if you live in Frankfurt, go into the Editor and type "F" then ALT-DownArrow. Press the DownArrow until you get to Frankfurt and finally press ALT to select Frankfurt. You will see the GMT Offset for Frankfurt is 1.00. Return to the SETUP Window, and enter 1.00 in the GMT Offset field. Once you have completed the SETUP Window, press OK. Now check the times of a few cities that you know what the current time is to make sure that you have correctly configured World Time. Operation --------- When the World Time program starts, you will see your current time, the GMT time, and the time for the first city in the TIMEZONE.INI file. To see the time zone in another city, you can click on the down arrow and then scroll through the cities. You can also use the up and down arrow keys to scroll through the cities. You can also type in the name of the city. As soon as you type in enough characters of the city to fully qualify it, it will appear. To exit the program, use ALT-F4 or the Quit button. Using the City Editor --------------------- You can Add, delete, and change cities that World Time knows about. From the main window, click on Edit. This puts you in the city editor. To add a new city, enter the correct city name (overwriting the current), and enter the correct GMT Offset and Day Light Savings flag. Once you are satisfied, click on the Add key. To modify or delete a city, you must first find it. Use the mouse or the keyboard to select the city from the city box. To update the city, make the desired changes, then click on the Update key. To delete the city, click on the update key. You will be asked to verify the deletion before the record is actually deleted. GMT Offsets ----------- Determining the correct GMT Offset is easiest done by finding an existing city in the same timezone. For example, to add Dusseldorf, first find Frankfurt's GMT and then use it for DusselDorf. Day Light Savings Flag ---------------------- This flag indicates the city observes Day Light Savings when it is in effect. This flag does not indicate that day light savings is currently in effect (that is done in the Setup Window). For example, Chicago observes Daylights Savings (as does nearly all U.S. cities); however, Phoenix does not. You will see that Phoenix does not have this flag set. I currently have no way of knowing which foreign cities use Day Light Savings so most of those cities have the Day Light Savings flag turned off. Incorrect Times --------------- If World Time comes up with a wrong time, there are two likely reasons: the GMT offset is wrong, or the Day Light Savings flag is wrong. If you find such a mistake, please let me know so that the next version of World Time has the data corrected. World Time's GMT Offset comes from a corporate Data Base and has a high probability of being correct. The GMT is an offset from the Greenwich Median Time (the time in London when Day Light Savings in not in effect). There is a map of GMT Offsets in the "Information Please" Almanac. This map is not very detailed, but will probably be suitable enough if you already know exactly where the city is. The more probable reason for the time being incorrect is Day Light Savings. In the US, Day Light Savings exists in nearly every city, but I do not currently know who is using Day Light Savings outside of the US other than England (they use it). As such, I have assumed no foreign cities use Day Light Savings. If you call another country and find out that World Time is wrong by 1 hour, find out if they are using Day Light Savings. If so, update the city using the city editor, and the time will be correct. I hope to find some reference to day light savings in other countries so that World Time can correctly take day light savings into account. LAN Operation ------------- I have World Time running on a Netware 3.11 LAN. Both TIMEZONE.EXE and TIMEZONE.DAT are placed in a read-only directory. When a user cannot gain write access to the TIMEZONE.DAT file, the SETUP and EDIT keys are disabled. Modification History -------------------- A.0.4: Dec 14 1992. Enh: The Window's position at closing is saved and used next time the application is run. A.0.3: Dec 12 1992. Fix: When typing in the name of a city, after a city is fully qualified, any other key resets the search (instead of just control-home). Enh: The active city is saved on exit and will be recalled when the program starts. Note: this is done by adding the [TimeZone] section header in the WIN.INI file. A.0.2: Nov 30 1992. Enh: Created new TIMEZONE.DAT file with 450 cities. NOTE: because of the large number of cities loaded, TIMEZONE loads slower than previously (it takes about 5 seconds on my 386/33). If the load time is unacceptable, you could delete cities from the data base. Enh: The TimeZone Code may now contain fractions for those cities that are 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 of a time zone. For example, India uses a GMT offset of 5.5. In the entire data base I include, only one city, Kathmandu uses 3/4 and none use 1/4. Enh: Redesigned the form to display all of the data in the smallest possible window. Enh: Added Online Help. Enh: Added City Editor Enh: New TimeZone.DAT format that allows easy updating for the city editor. Enh: When program is minimized, the timer interrupt is disabled so the program does not use any time. Enh: Setup screen now allows any GMT Offset. Fix: When scrolling through cities (without using the scroll bar - ie. dragging), a subscript out of bounds would occur. While scrolling, the timer interrupt keeps occuring, using what ever city index was current. Apparently, this index is not always valid when using the drag method of scrolling. Now the program turns off the clock for the city during selection of a city. The other two clocks continue to be updated. A.0.1: Jul 5, 1992. Fix: Removed use of True Type fonts so program will display correctly on Windows 3.0. Fix: Initial form now starts in the upper left hand corner. Enh: Added Date and AM/PM indicator. Enh: Local Time Zone, Daylight Savings flag, and location Database is now loaded from a file allowing end-user to change. Enh: Allow configuration in program via the new Options window. A.0.0: Jun 16, 1992. Initial Release.