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Sunclock

Un article de Arvernes Wiki.

Image:Note_tip.png Sunclock Web Site

Image:Fleche_animee_5.gifPlease help us to improve that wiki dedicated to Sunclock.
Image:Fleche_animee_5.gifFirst you have to register, then edit the page(s) you want, and add your contribution to the site. Thanks. Francois.


Sunclock overview

Sommaire

[masquer]

From the Readme file

Sunclock is a sophisticated clock for the X Window system. It is based on an earlier version by John Mackin, itself derived from the Suntools program by John Walker. Many possibilities of the original astronomy routines are now exploited.
Sunclock displays a map of the Earth and shows which portion is illuminated by the sun. It can commute between two states, the "clock window" and the "map window". The clock window displays a small map of the Earth and therefore occupies little space on the screen, while the "map window" displays a large map and offers more advanced functions: local time of cities, Sun and Moon position, etc.
A customizable list of cities is loaded by sunclock at start-up (and can be modified interactively, as well). Using the information provided for these cities, the map window can operate in five different modes:
  • "Legal time" mode: legal time of default time zone and GMT time are displayed.
  • "Coordinate" mode: by clicking on a city, users get coordinates (latitude, longitude) of that city, legal time and sunrise/sunset.
  • "Solar" mode: by clicking on a point of the map (either a city or another point), solar time and day length are shown.
  • "Hour Extension" mode: displays solar times from 00:00 to 23:00 in bottom strip, according to the Sun position.
  • "Distance" mode: shows distances in km and miles between two arbitrary locations.
A further functionality is the "Progress" feature, which allows to accelerate the evolution of time, so as to observe the evolution of day/night periods and seasons.
The sunclock package includes a vector map of the Earth (loosely derived from the xearth package by Kirk Lauritz Johnson), which is capable of building Earth maps of arbitrary sizes without losing the accuracy of details (within certain limits...)
Meridians, Parallels, Equator, Tropics and Arctic circles can also be drawn. All these actions are performed through mouse clicks on the map or on the bottom strip, and/or with keyboard shortcuts. There is inline help available by typing 'h' or by clicking on the bottom strip -- so that no further explanation should be needed. Commuting between the clock and map states is obtained by typing '!' or simply "Space".
By default, the Sun and Moon are also shown on the map (rather, the positions of Earth where Sun and Moon are at zenith are shown). Coordinates of meridians, parallels, cities, the names of cities can be displayed on the map.
If you are using a monochrome display, there is an option -colorlevel "value" that will enable sunclock to run in monochrome mode (in that case, use -colorlevel 0).
Under pseudocolor displays (depth <= 8), sunclock allocates private colormaps as soon as they are needed; there is also a builtin machanism which automatically quantizes true-color Earth maps which would have too many distinct colors for Pseudocolor displays. At the moment, sunclock can read .jpg, .xpm or .xpm.gz images, and also its own .vmf vector map format. Other image formats have to be converted to xpm or jpg before being loaded - e.g. with the netpbm or with the Imagemagick package.

Sunclock versions 3.xx are released under the GPL (GNU General Public License).

Screenshots

Main Program
Main Menu
Zoom selector
Urban Selector Menu
File Selector Menu
Option Menu
Map to Root Window
Meridians/Parallels
Zoom Resolution (New Zealand - Zoom rate: 50%
Additional Data
Some of the maps available
Bio Map
Depth Map
EarthLights Map
Elevation Map
Timezones Map

Changes

Version 3.56 June 22, 2006
  • Minor bug fixes (segfault bug in -mostly obsolete?- colorlevel 0).
  • added -zoomimage <file> (zoom image file) as new command line option so as to change the vmf file used in the zoom widget.
Version 3.55 June 18, 2006
  • The default clock/map image file is now 'timezones.vmf'
  • Added the new vector map file 'countries.vmf' (political boundaries)
  • Added some code in readvmf.c for more verbose information
  • Added 'zoomwidth' and 'zoomheight' as new options in VMF format
  • Completely reworked the explanations on the VMF format file in VMF.txt
  • Change default zoom mode to 0 (=no attempt to correct aspect ratio as default behaviour)
  • Corrected minor bug in the mouse tracking procedure for area selection.
  • Installing now 'emx' in sunclock's SHAREDIR/bin subdirectory, in order to avoid possible conflicts with 'emx' from the xrmap package.
Version 3.54 July 29, 2005
  • Corrected segfault bug #315462 from Debian bug tracking system.
  • Improved look of 3D buttons.
  • xterm or terminal-emulator no longer needed since sunclock now includes its own utility (emx, a very small emacs clone...).
Version 3.53 November 22, 2004
  • All menus now use buttons with a 3D look
  • Key shortcut hints have been substantially improved
  • New option -image
  • VMF format has been slightly enhanced (allows text labels)
  • Corrected further GUI bugs
  • Command line options -jump and -progress should now work.
Version 3.52 October 9, 2004
  • Corrected many small GUI bugs or annoyances. Thanks to Jamie Zawinski for pointing out some of them and for useful advice.
Version 3.51, August 27, 2004
  • New release, jumped version number to 3.51 because of substantial improvements made
  • Added support for reading GIF and PNG images : readgif.c & readpng.c, snarfed from xpaint's rw/ routines. Sunclock now requires libpng (GIF is read by ad hoc routines)
  • Added a .spec file to enable building rpm packages, thanks to François Massonneau
  • Added Polish localization, thanks to Cezary Morga
  • improved -setfont option, to take into account language specific font settings

Download

These are the files available for download.
Main Program
Files Comments New
Sunclock Main program as a tarball.
No


Sunclock RPM file, for RPM based distributions.
No
An Ubuntu package would be great - help appreciated


Additional Data
Files Comments New
sunclock_jpeg_medium_maps-1.0-1.i386.rpm (Medium resolution Earth maps package - size: 2.5megs) No
sunclock_jpeg_big_maps-1.0-1.i386.rpm (Big resolution Earth maps package - size: About 8.0megs) No
sunclock_huge_earthmap-1.0-1.i386.rpm (Package updated on 06/25/2001) (The BIG ONE. To get the full power of the zoom implemented within Sunclock, you can use this 11Mb jpg Earth map. No
big_images Available from the FTP site (just pick the file you want) No
e43_color1_sh Available from the FTP site (just pick the file you want) No
huge.jpg Available from the FTP site (just pick the file you want) No
medium_images Available from the FTP site (just pick the file you want) No
sunclock_xpm_maps Available from the FTP site (just pick the file you want) No

Author

All Sunclock revisions from version 1.4 to version 3.xx are by : Jean-Pierre Demailly.

Mailing List

How to subscribe :
A mailing list has been created on October 13th 2002 dedicated to both programs : Sunclock and Xrmap. On june 24th, 2008, I have moved the list to a new domain, so if you want to subscribe, or if you have subscribed, and want your subscription to be moved to the new domain, you have to subscribe again. How to do? It's easy, just send a mail to : "jpd-subscribe@ml.arvernes.com". Don't write anything in the body of the message, but in the line "subject" just write the word subscribe ; that's all.

N.B.   (Easier : just click here, this will open your mail client and write the right stuff to the right places. What to do? Just send the mail just created) : jpd-subscribe@ml.arvernes.com
Collection of prior postings to the list are available[1].

IRC

Maybe you can find some Sunclock And/or Xrmap users in #jpd on irc.freenode.net for answers to questions and general discussion. Join us on jpd IRC chanel

Notes

  1. ↑ You can visit the jpd Archives. We have older archives for jpd (previous to july 1st 2008) too.
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