Welcome to the home of Volkers TimeCards for the Newton® !
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On this page you can downloadVolkers TimeCards 1.4, my little application for the Apple Newton® PDA.

See the new features of TC 1.4. (04/05/1999)



 


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Contents:

Introduction
Entry View
Group View
Action Button
Preferences
Thumbnail
Package
Project history
Future plans
Known bugs and problems
FAQs
Enhancement suggestions until now
Registration
Disclaimer
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:

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:

Stability:
TC has been tested on both the MP100 and MP2000 models.

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.
Some registered users encouraged me to raise the price. I did now some enhancements that I personally do not need, therefore I followed their encouragment.
The price for TC is now US$10 or DM 15. See registration.
 


Entry View:
 

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  1. Select the current processing day to edit.
  2. Navigate quickly to the Newton's system date (if not already there).
  3. Drag the edges to resize the application.
  4. Advance the current day one day backwards or one day in forward.
  5. Starting Time for the current entry. Tap to select new time and date. The End Time, if present, will be moved to the same amount.
  6. Check this boxes to select the entries that will be considered by those commands of the action button which need preselection.
  7. End Time for the current entry. This is optional. If you tap on it the current time will be used as the End Time. Tap again to change or delete it if you want to. The End Time cannot be earlier than the Starting Time. If it would be, you are asked now if you want to adjust the Starting Time to the new End Time. This way the entry will be moved and will have a length of 0. That way no negative, impossible duration can be entered but you still have the flexibility to change End Times arbitrarily.
  8. Minus picker. Subtract time from the duration.
  9. 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. ).

  10. Since Version 1.2 you can specify the duration with the End Time as well.
  11. Times shown can be rounded by the following amounts:
  12. Info button for about, help and preferences
  13. Static date that can be used as a reminder the last time TC was synchronized with another application.

  14. (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).
  15. If you resize the application, this is for maximizing it again.
  16. Scroll records up.
  17. Scroll records down.
  18. Scroll records left.
  19. Scroll records right.
  20. Toggle between Entry View und Group View.
  21. Add a new record.
  22. Thumbnail.
  23. All choices you created for this picker (the picker list).
  24. Delete a choice for this picker.
  25. Edit  a choice for this picker. In the appearing slip you can either change the current item only or all of its usages in the existing entries.
  26. Create a new choice for this picker. If the corresponding entry is not empty and that string is not currently in the picker list the entry can be copied into the picker list. Else you can create a new string.
  27. Erase the current entry of this picker.
  28. Edit the current entry of this picker without adding or modifying it in the list of choices. In the appearing slip you can either change the current item only or all of its usages in the existing entries.
  29. Column for optional comments.
  30. The header for optional comments. All column names can be edited now. Tap twice quickly on the name to rename it.
  31. Resize the columns by dragging the thick lines at the right border of each column heading.
  32. Column for project names.
  33. Checkbox for entries. When checked (the default), this entry will be considered in the Group View. If the Export checked Project Entries only preference is activated, only the checked entries will be exported.
  34. The header for project names. All column names can be edited now. Tap twice quickly on the name to rename it.
  35. action button.
  36. Fees column. See preferences for more details.

Group View:

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  1. Total time.

  2. (Note: Entries that have unspecified time periods are shown as '+ n*???' where n represents the count of those entries.)
  3. Show the period for (relative to the current processing day)
  4. Defines the number of hours in one working day.

  5. (For example: When a work day is 4 hours long then for 7 hours the displayed time would appear as '1 days, 3:00'.)
  6. Group the entries by project or project and comments.
  7. List of all comments for the project (only if grouped by project exclusively)
  8. Names of projects.
  9. Duration after subtracting the times entered through the minus picker from the total time.
  10. Sum of the times in the minus picker for this project.
Note that in the total of the durations only the durations whose project names do not start with '*' are considered.


Action Button:

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Preferences:

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Section Misc:

Section Column Visibility:
For each column you can specify itís visibility. Note that the ëStartTimeí and ëEndTimeí columns apply to the Entry View only and the ëtotalTimeí column applies to the Group View only.

Section Project fees:
Choose a ëProjectí with the picker. Enter a fee. This information will be used for the fee column on a fee per hour basis for the corresponding project. A very simple model is used (duration in hours) * (fees per hour). But it is nice to have an rough overview of the fees for each project. For backward compatibility issues, those fees are stored separately. This means, if you rename a project, you have to readjust itís fee. For the same reason, the application has to go through all Entries in your soup. This may take some time. But this has to be done only once after opening the preferences dialog. To efficiently manipulate fees, you can open the preferences dialog and manipulate some fees at once.
 


Thumbnail:please enable pictures

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 1.4a (04/05/1999)

This version again is based on some enhancement suggestions from registered users.

Bugfixes:

The new features are: Version 1.4a:  This will consume approximatly 109K on your Newton device.



Project history:

TC 1.3a (August 29, 1998)

This version is based on some enhancement suggestions from registered users.

The new features are:

Version 1.3a: This will consume approximatly 106K on your Newton device.

Version 1.2a (April 13, 1998):

This version is based on some enhancement suggestions from registered users.
The new features are:

TC 1.1f (April 1, 1998):
This is another minor fix. In the group view the sums of the minus picker times didn't show up.
Sorry again. I messed things while changing the development environment. Sorry again.
I am still offering this version for downloading because of the probability that there are bugs in 1.2 that are not present in 1.1. This way you have the chance to downgrade until those are fixed.

Version 1.1e (March 25, 1998):
This is only a minor fix. I forgot to set up the round by picker's initial choice to reflect the last choice the user made
before closing TC. Sorry for that!
I also removed the 'round by 0:45' choice, this obviously didn't made sence ...

Version 1.1d (March 20, 1998):
Fixes a bug in the 12 hour representation of times. There had been strange behavior in times between 12 and 1
o'clock.
Now it is also possible to rename the project and comments columns.
Those names and the positions of the sizers for the columns are persistent now.
TC is compressed now. It takes less than 80K when installed on the Newton® device.

Version 1.1c (February 2nd, 1998):
I have encountered a bug in the group view. When grouping the month december, the entries of the following january where considered in that group as well. This is solved with 1.1c.

TC 1.1b ( November 9th,1997)
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.

TC 1.1a (October 31, 1997):
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 1.1 (September 23, 1997)
Initial release with this user interface.
Exporting data introduced.

Version 1.0 (February, 1997)
Initial release.



Future plans:

I may include some of your enhancement requests. If you have suggestions, please contact me.
TC 1.4 is the last version for NOS 1.x.
If feedback and registrations are increasing enough, I may include NOS 2.x routing. This way email may be available to NOS 2.x users and probably there will be printing in the group view.
But this will take a while (if ever).



Known bugs and problems:

FAQs:
 

Enhancement suggestions from users not implemented so far:

Following is a list of your suggestions that are left. It is ordered by priority that comes from the amount of people suggesting that particular item. I may include those suggestions in future releases.


Registration:

TC is a hobby project for me. I find 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).

The price for TC is DM 15 or US$10.

The registration procedure is explained in the file 'register.txt' which comes with the latest package .
You can register Volkers Timecards via Kagi as well.
 



Disclaimer:

Use this program at your own risk!

Under no circumstances shall I be liable for the consequences of your using this software, whether your inability to use the software, your Newton, or damages you incur.
 


Acknowledgements:

This program originally had been developed with Newt. Newt is 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, April 1999


Look at the TC homepage for current versions.
Volker Deffner - vdeffner@t-online.de