pseudoberries random thoughts about life, hacking and open source

Alarm Clock in debian and ubuntu repositories!

I just discovered that Alarm Clock has been added as a package to the debian testing/unstable repositories and thus also to ubuntu karmic!

The name of the package is 'alarm-clock-applet', so you can just go ahead and:

apt-get install alarm-clock-applet

Alarm Clock 0.2 released!

It's finally here! Grab it while it's warm!

Highlights for this release include: Multiple alarms, different alarm types, repeated alarms and snooze support!

The 0.2 release of marks an important milestone of the Alarm Clock development. If you're observant you'll notice that the name has changed from Alarm Applet to Alarm Clock. The project development has also been moved to Launchpad, and it has received it's own homepage. Check it out!

New features

MULTIPLE ALARMS
Alarm Clock now supports multiple alarms running simultaneously.

ALARM TYPES
Alarm Clock now distinguishes between two types of alarms: Clocks and Timers. The default type, Clock, will trigger at a specific time of day. The Timer will trigger after a specified amount of hours, minutes and seconds.

REPEATED ALARMS
Alarm Clock will now allow you to specify at what days an alarm should trigger. No need to activate the alarm before you go to sleep any more!

SNOOZE
An alarm or timer can now be snoozed for a specified number of minutes. This only applies for alarms which uses sound notification. Clicking the applet will snooze all running alarms. To clear all alarms, right click the applet and choose "Clear alarms".

Multiple alarms in Alarm Applet

I've lately been pondering how the Alarm Applet should support multiple alarms. This would be more convenient than having one applet instance running per alarm and would make integration with intlclock easier in the future.

First off, the Set Alarm menu item would have to be replaced with something like this:

Also, all the notification options in the Preferences dialog would have to be moved to a new Edit/New alarm dialog, as you might want different notifications for different alarms.

Clicking the Edit alarms... menu item would bring up something like this mockup:

The edit and delete buttons might be moved to the tree view itself. Clicking the Add / Edit button would open a dialog much similar to the Set Alarm dialog, however with the following notification options taken from the Preferences dialog:

• Play sound
• Start application

I would also like to add the following options:

• Alarm type: Fixed time or Timer (countdown)
• Enable snooze for X minutes.
• Repeat alarm every: mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun (check each day you want the alarm to be active on). This option is not available under Timer mode.

Regarding the backend for the alarms, I've decided to use GConf for this instead of evolution-data-server. I don't think that E-D-S is the way to go as it's too complex & hairy, completely undocumented and doesn't allow for mandatory settings like GConf does.

The alarms will be stored in GConf as directories named alarm{n} where n = [ 0, 1, 2, ... ]

What do you think? Constructive feedback wanted!

GNOME Alarm Applet 0.1.2 released!

This release includes the following changes:

• New alarm clock icon! Thanks to Lasse GullvÃ¥g Sætre
  Awe at it's ringing glory:

  

• Support for multiple panel sizes: Icon will scale to the size of the panel.
• Support for different panel orientations. Create a panel on the left or right, drag applet around

GNOME Alarm Applet 0.1.1 bugfix release

I've just released GNOME Alarm Clock Applet 0.1.1 which includes some important bug fixes as well as some minor improvements. I also updated the applet page with some additional installation information. Enjoy!

GNOME Alarm Applet 0.1 released!

I've just released GNOME Alarm Clock applet 0.1! It's currently in beta, but quite functional. I've used it myself for over a month now

Please try it out and give me some feedback!