17 years ago

v1.0.1 - date bug fix
checked the clock this morning and saw that the date was wrong.
the date didn't roll over at midnight, because i forgot to put in
a check for it. should be fixed now.

v1.0 official release of ETHEL THE FROG
okay, ppl, here's the deal: discovered that there's ALREADY
a clock named Chameleon Clock being marketed for Winblows,
which consequently means the name is copyrighted. therefore,
under the site terms of use, the admins could delete Chameleon
Clock at any request from the copyright owners, or simply
because they deem it a violation. the entire content is
technically in conflict with the terms of use. since i don't
want to lock horns with anybody, i've changed the name of this
screenlet to ETHEL THE FROG. from now on, it's called ETHEL THE FROG.
that's the official name, but EthelTheFrogScreenlet is the actual
python script name. i don't want it to disappear one day, as things
which violate site policies have a tendency to do.

This software has NO ASSOCIATION WITH CHAMELEON CLOCK FOR WINDOWS,
or any other commercial product. ETHEL THE FROG is a clock screenlet
consisting of a python script and a few images i created.
Chameleon Clock is some Winblows product i know nothing about, it
appears.

accidental name collision has now been eliminated.
had to change a bunch of strings, of course.
no actual code changes.
rather than starting over with the version numbers, i just
decide to make this 1.0.

v0.4 multiple features added. 7-16-2008

*now supports themes upon a suggestion from aantn (very good idea).
*supports svg, png and jpg via gtk (no gnome screensaver problems, etc)
*face image paints under rim as well, creates a 'textured' clock look
*supports scalable fonts for face numbers via pango.
*does roman numbers with pango scalable fonts as well.
*hour and minute marks with Unicode glyphs, like clip art.
*second hand shutoff switch reduces updating to once a minute
*label box that displays the date or a user string
*still color configurable and faster than it was.
too many other new features and adjustments to list.

if you saw graphics corruption while running Java
apps/applets, that means the old version was pushing
a little too much down the graphics pipe. that's
been corrected in 0.4, no more Java issues. now all that
has to be sent to the server is the image of the face
from an offscreen buffer. it uses a little more memory,
but it's worth it to keep the load off the X server. draws
faster too, regardless. it DOES take around a second
or so to scale, but that's a small price to pay if you
can run it at %300 with no speed problems. scaling speed
is largely a question of your memory bandwidth, cuz most
of the work is shuffling memory around.
second hand stutters when you open the menu or properties,
i suppose gtk grabs the server. also does it out of
the blue sometimes. got me, i just draw what the system
clock sez. working on it, but i'm stumped.


v0.3 new features, better code 7-5-2008
added a new customization feature.
now u can load an image file to display
on the clock face, so you can put a picture
of your boss or George Bush in it what
formats does it support? damned if i know,
but it works with png and jpg. it'll load
anything that gets along with gtk, cuz
i used the gtk.gdk module to do it. note that
the picture is stretched/squashed/whatever
to make it fit the clock face, so roughly
square pix look best. scaling it takes
a half sec or so on my box, but once the
scaling is done the image face is faster
than the gradient face, so u actually get
a few cycles more leftover if u use an image.
also made a few minor efficency changes. it
now checks the opacity of the face and
marking colors, so if u set either of those
colors to 0 opacity, the drawing ops are
turned off and it's faster. added an option
to turn off tick line drawing seperately too.

v0.2 afterthought upgrade 6-28-2008
added alpha controls for the shadows and highlights.
changed the draw_base method to all strokes instead of fill
and strokes, efficiency improvement, also allows for a
translucent face in an opaque frame, nice effect. Also
fixed a typo and made a few esthetic adjustments.

v0.1 beta release 6-27-2008