Re: [mcountd] forward plan

[Karl-Martin S. <ksk...@cs...>]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, Joe Bentley wrote:
> I'm not familiar with ELKS. Last I heard the project still
> did not have a stable release. Has this changed?

I had a preliminary version of mcountd running on it, but ELKS is quite useless
at the moment. Other than the amusement factor, at least.

> > Just need to make a parser. Maybe I can use something from date?
> 
> It's gpled. They _want_ you to use it. Or if you don't want
> to wrestle with importing someone else's code you could
> call date with system(3) and copy the output to a temp file.

I know it's GPL, but i thought that maybe the parsing would be too fancy for
mcountd. Anyway, I'm having a look at the date source to check it out.

> > >    4. the ability to end when the timer rolls over.
> > >       This would make it possible to use it as a
> > >       count-down timer for a shell script
> > 
> > Simple. I will also add the function to have it display only zeros at
> > roll-over.
> 
> And actually exit. So the user can make a script to the effect of
>    mcountd ${auction_end_time}
>    beep ; beep ; beep

2 extra options, one to stop the program before roll over, and one to let the
display stay at 00:00:00 after roll over.

> > The name is actually kind of stupid... I'll add your comment to the
> > webpage.
> 
> The name was a great name until a few days ago. The only
> problem is that it is restrictive in the users mind. I see
> a 'millenial countdown timer' and have to exercise major
> cognition to realize that I can use the same thing for
> counting down to the end of an auction.

Well, I'm not really ready for a name change. I think I'll stick to mcountd
and not use "millennium count down" too much. That way, the "m" in mcountd can just 
stand for some unknown word. I'll emphasize that this is a "general count down
utility" at freshmeat and on the webpages.


  Karl

-- 
Karl-Martin Skontorp
E-Mail: <ksk...@cs...>
WWW: http://homepages.strath.ac.uk/~aeu99233/