Welcome to the home of TimeCards for
the Newton® !
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On this page you can download
TimeCards
1.1, my little application for the Apple Newton® PDA.
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Contents:
Introduction
Entry View
Group View
Thumbnail
Package
Project history
Future plans
Known bugs and problems
FAQs
Enhancement suggestions until now
Acknowledgements
Links
Introduction
TimeCards (TC) is a little application specifically designed for tracking
time spent working with different projects. During the
development of TC rapid, efficient entry of data was the driving requirement
leading to an interface that requires 1 to 4 taps on the screen to enter
a Time record. When time entries are added to TC comments can be appended
as well.
Application Funtionality:
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Rapid data entry through simple intuitive interface.
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Aggregated views of time entries and comments displayed by day/week/month.
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Data export to Tab delimited format.
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TC 1.1 is still a NOS 1.x application yet functional under NOS 2.0.
Uses for TC:
As a computer consultant, often involved with several projects simultaneously,
having to track my time on an hourly basis, and also being a Newton freak,
I found the need for such an application as TimeCards an absolute essential
and a great project for my Newton. However, TC can probably be used in
other situations that are demanding a time log.
Limitations in TC:
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No printing and faxing.
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No searching.
-
Undo command is not functional.
Stability:
TC has been tested on both the MP100 and MP130 models. I have also
received reports from users stating that TC runs on the MP2000 as well.
From the Author:
As the Author and a constant user of TC I am interested in receiving
feedback from users be it bugs or enhancement suggestions. I
have released TC into the public domain as shareware and thus request a
small fee be payed to me if you use TC after a trial period. Since I live
in Germany I can take both Marks and Dollars.
The price for TC is DM 10 or $5.
Registration:
The registration procedure is explained in the file 'register.txt'
which comes with the latest package .
Use this program at your own risk!.
Entry View:
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Drag the edges to resize the application.
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Advance the current day one day backwards or one day in forward.
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Select the day to edit.
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Delete the current record.
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Starting time for the current activity. Tap to select new time and date.
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Minus picker. Subtract time from the duration.
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Times shown can be rounded by the following amounts:
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'none': no rounding
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round at 5 minutes
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round at 10 minutes
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round at 15 minutes
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round at 30 minutes
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round at 45 minutes
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round at 1 hour
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Horizontal scrolling.
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Help
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Static date that can be used as a reminder the last time TC was synchronized
with another application.
(Note: This date is manually set by the user. Not automatically by
TC. As an example: I use this date as a personal reminder of the last time
I manually transferred TC entries to an internal project accounting system
used within the company that I work for).
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If you resize the application, this is for maximizing it again.
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Scroll records up.
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Scroll records down.
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Add a new record.
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Export all data beginning with the current processing day in tab delimited
format (set the connection on your computer to 9600, N, 1 ).
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Toggle between Entry View und Group
View.
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Thumbnail.
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Delete all entries before the current processing day.
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All choices you created for this picker.
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Delete a choice for this picker.
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Create a new choice for this picker.
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Erase the current entry of this picker.
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Edit the current entry of this picker without adding or modifying it in
the list of choices.
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Column for optional comments.
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Column for project names.
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Duration. The calculated period of time between this and the next record,
optionally reduced by the time chosen in the minus picker. (Note: The last
record will have '??:??' in the duration column. )
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Resize the columns by dragging the thick lines at the right border of each
column.
Group View:
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Total time.
(Note: Entries that have unspecified time periods are shown as '+ n*???'
where n represents the count of those entries.)
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Show the period for (relative to the current processing day)
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Defines the number of hours in one working day.
(For example: When a work day is 4 hours long then for 7 hours the
displayed time would appear as '1 days, 3:00'.)
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Group the entries by projct or project and comments.
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List of all comments for the project (only if grouped by project exclusively)
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Names of projects.
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Duration after subtracting the times entered through the minus picker from
the total time.
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Sum of the times in the minus picker for this project.
Thumbnail:
Opening TC takes some time since many views have to be opened. To shorten
this time drastically the thumbnail view can be used instead of closing
the application. When the thumbnail view is shown, TC is 'hidden' but still
opened (and using memory, sorry). Tapping on the TC icon in the thumbnail
view shows TC again very quickly. You can drag the thumbnail view in the
empty areas to get it 'out of your way' when using other applications.
Closing the thumbnail view shuts down the application completely.
Latest Package:
Below are links to download the releases of TC.
TC 1.1c
I have encountered a bug in the group view. When grouping the month
december, the enties of the following january where considered in that
group as well. This is solved with 1.1c.
Version 1.1c (February 2nd, 1998):
Project history:
TC 1.1b
Solves a scrolling problem in the group view after changing the current
processing day.
There is also a little functional extension (inspired by an enhancement
request):
When the first character of the project name is '*' the times of this
entry are disregarded in the total times of the group view. This way it
is possible to record longer non productive times with '* pause', for example.
The total time reported in the group view will then include only the
productive ones.
Version 1.1b (November 9, 1997; Docs December 16, 1997):
TC 1.1a
It solves some problems with the 12 hour representation of times. It
also lets you add now entries on every processing day (prior to 1.1a you
only where able to add an entry at the system date and had to move it afterwards).
Version 1.1a (October 31, 1997):
Version 1.1 (September 23, 1997)
Since I released my first version of TC,
I got some enhancement requests. They adressed the user interface
and the ability to export data.
Future plans:
I may create a pure NOS 2.x version in the future. This may be a total
redesign. If you have suggestions, please contact
me.
Known bugs and problems:
-
Changing display mode (partrait <-> landscape) while TC is open may
result in an not rounded representation of the data (the value of the 'round
by' - picker may be ignored).
Solution: simply use the 'round by' - picker again..
-
It has been reported that the Newon sometime reboots when TC is run under
very low heap conditions. Normally this should never occur in the Newton
Script environment. Probably that's a problem in the system software.
-
It has been reported that when using TC on the international version of
the MP2000 with german localisation, you are unable to change the start
time of an entry. (Since I don't have an MP2000 I am unable to reproduce
and to solve that problem).
Solution: use the MP2000 with the localisation for the US.
FAQs:
-
Question: What does the 'accounted until' - picker do?
Answer: Nothing! It is simply a memory aid for forgetful people
like me to note down the last day of using the information in TC for accounting
with the back office.
-
Question: How do I set the 'duration' of the last entry of a day?
Answer: I use an entry of a project named 'end of day'.
-
Question: The width of the columns is always reseted to default
values during reset of the Newton or freezing TC. Is that right?
Answer: Sorry, in the moment that's the way it is.
Enhancement suggestions
from users:
-
editing project names
Not only adding and deleting, but also editing a project name in a
picker would be nice. It wouldn't be bad if there would be a user's choice
to change all existing entries accordingly.
-
end of day button
Instead of ending a day with a special entry it would be nice to have
a button for setting the duration of the last entry of a day by taking
into consideration the current system time.
-
copy the whole day
In the situation where most of the days have similar entries, it would
probably save a few interactions with TC if it would be possible
to copy whole days.This way you would only have to maintain the differences.
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set-ups for fees
We are already calculating times for pojects. Why not directly calculating
the fees for the projects?
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widths for columns should be persistent
Right now we loose the width of the columns by resetting the Newton
or freezing TC. It would be better not to loose that information.
-
user defined columns
Not only two, but an arbitrary number of columns wouldn't be bad.
-
printing
sorry folks. I don'd have a print pack. I will see what I can do..
TC is a hobby project for me. I find the the Newton is to be a great piece
of technology and really enjoy programming him in my (rare) spare time.
I do plan to maintain TC on a parttime/hobby basis. However, because TC
is a hobby I can't promise delivery schedules for new features. As my user
base grows with more registered users my motivation tends to increase (obviously).
Acknowledgements:
This program has been developed with Newt. It's a development environment
for theApple Newton® running on the Newton® from Steve Weyer.
Thanks to Allan Marcus and Hardy Macia for their great date and time
prototypes.
Links:
The ULTIMATE Newton
Newt
by Steve Weyer
Volker Deffner, February 1998
Look at the TC homepage
for current versions.
Volker Deffner - vdeffner@t-online.de