Extended System Time: A JAWS script for time in any World City
Extended System Time is a JAWS script that will extend the power of your insert+f12 keystroke. By default, in JAWS, this key says the time with a single keypress and the date with a second press. By using this module not only can you precisely customise how this is announced, but also retrieve the time and date for any city in the world.
cautions, warnings, and threats
Before you read any further, don’t. Stop and listen. This software is beta. It’s so beta, nobody but me has even seen it. It has not been tested, has not been tried, and is almost but not quite guaranteed to not work on your system. If you want to try it anyway, I think you’re stupid. But I also like persistence in a blog reader, so I shall provide you a download link for Extended System time, version 0.1.
Extended system time (90)
How to Install
Only competent JAWS users should try this. By competent, I probably don’t mean you. If you think I do, then let it be on your own head: if you’re being sensible and stopping at this point - well done. In a few days, weeks at the most, there’ll be a proper, user-friendly version for you to play with.
1. Extract all files to your settings directory.
2. 2. Open extendedSystemTime.jss and compile it.
3. 3. Open default.jss and add use “ExtendedSystemTime.jsb”
4. 4. open ExtendedSystemTime.jsd and paste its contents into default.jsd. Save.
5. 5. Open keyboard manager. Navigate to default. Assign the script sayExtendedSystemDateOrTime to insert+f12 if you want to overwrite default. Be sure to assign the right script, other extended ones are included for your remapping pleasure.
How to use
To hear your local time or date, press your key once or twice per usual. The only difference is the format in which the time/date is announced. Pressing insert+f12 a third time prompts you for a city. In this box, you may type:
1. The word “settings”, which will open the settings file. It is not yet documented.
2. 2. The word “flush”, which will remove your saved cities and their time data. Useful for any change in time zone or daylight savings time, on the part of you, your computer, or your target city.
3. 3. A period “.”, dot, full-stop. Typing this by itself and hitting enter will generate a list of cities for which you’ve already requested the time, any of which you may switch to by choosing them from said list.
4. Needless to say you also enter a city here, if you’re looking for the time somewhere around the globe.
The city List
The list of cities you use is maintained and, as stated, accessible by entering a dot in the city name field. Furthermore, if you enter an identical name to one already entered, JAWS will look up the time from your file, rather than running off to the Internet to find the data. Just beware that if you enter something slightly different (i.e. “London” once but “London, England” a second time) to JAWS they’ll be different things. Also worth remembering is that there are lots of places in the world - many of my colleagues seem to believe that the world revolves around their spot on it. “Saint Petersburg” is a city in Russia, for instance, and because so many people are lazy, “St. Petersburg” redirects to the same place, despite the shortened form of Saint being used by the Americans. This is easy to fix - entering “St. Petersburg, fl” or “St. Petersburg, Pa” tells JAWS where you’re aiming for and all is good.
The data
JAWS saves the names and time offsets of cities you look up to a file within your settings directory. It also stores the formats you wish to use to have times and dates spoken in the same file.
These formats use placeholders for various things - for instance, “$h” means the current hour, in 12-hour format. All of these “tags” must be proceeded with a dollar sign and you may use:
h, hh, H or HH for hour (with or without leading zeros, uppercase for 24)
m or mm for minutes, s or ss for seconds
t or tt for the meridian (”A” or “AM”)
y, yy, yyy for the year (9, 09, 2009)
uppercase M, MM, MMM, MMMM for the month (2, 02, Feb, February)
d, dd, ddd, dddd for the day (9, 09, Mon, Monday)
o for the day’s ordinal (st, nd, th, rd)
l for the short location (”Brno”)
ll for the long location (”Brno, Czech Republic”)
Note that the latter two only work in the “elsewhere” scripts and aren’t part of general time functionality.
Credits, help and sources
I must extend a huge thanks to Kevin Jones, without whom this plugin would not be possible. Kevin is a superb mathematician and an integral friend - his knowledge has floored me on several occasions and I have become a much more rounded individual due to his remarkably precise assistance.
I must also thank geonames.org, who’s website Geonames.org provides all the data that this plugin works with.
Feedback
New, shiny, leakier than Lizas bucket. This is extended system time. Comment with your problems, thoughts, critiques and comments, but do remember I warned you off downloading in the first place.
Licensing
The GeoNames data and services and the license for this JAWS Plugin are the same:
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.