Enhancements to the panel clock applet
Summary
Improve the support for multiple timezones/locations in the clock applet, including useful information such as day/night, geographic location, and weather. This will make the clock more useful for people who travel, or have worldwide connections.
Here is how it currently looks: http://people.redhat.com/mclasen/intlclock/intlclock-2007-09-29.png
For comparison, here are Bryans mockups for the new features: http://people.redhat.com/mclasen/intlclock/mockup-with-weather.png http://people.redhat.com/mclasen/intlclock/mockup-change-default.png
Owner
- Name: DavidZeuthen, MatthiasClasen, BryanClark
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 9
- Last updated: 2008-03-03
- Percentage of completion: 100%
Our own version of the intlcock has been in rawhide for quite a while. With gnome-panel 2.21.5, the various intlclock variants have been merged back into the upstream panel clock. libgweather is now a separate module, and will appear as a separate package in rawhide soon.
Remaining work: bug fixes and polish.
Detailed Description
This work will be based on earlier work done by Novell (intlclock). intlclock was shipped with SLES10, Service Pack 2, and it is planned to merge it with the upstream panel clock in Gnome 2.22 (see here and here ).
Additional features that we will add (and contribute upstream for Gnome 2.22):
- Indicate the current timezone in the map and the list of locations (Done)
- Support changing the system timezone from the popup. The implementation will use Dbus system bus activation and Policy'Kit ('Done)
- Support adjusting the clock in a similar fashion (Done)
- Adjust the "Set" buttons to what the policy allows (Done)
- Display some weather information for each location in the popup (Done)
- Allow to show arbitrary locations, not just principal timezone locations (Done)
- Monitor network status and get weather information when going online (Done)
- Display weather icon for the current location on the panel (Done)
- Maybe display full weather information in a dialog (Done, as a tooltip)
- Maybe use different clock faces for day/night (Done)
- Make the sections collapsable with expanders, like the current panel clock does (Done)
- The applet should look for /etc/sysconfig/clock and use it if found (Done)
When all this is done, the clock applet will have all the functionality of system-config-date (minus NTP configuration, which should go elsewhere) and the weather applet.
Benefit to Fedora
Scope
Requires working with upstream on integrating intlclock and our patches for Gnome 2.22.
Test Plan
1. Add a bunch of locations to the clock, check that they appear correctly in the map and the list of locations, show the right time, and weather information. 1. Verify that changing timezones and adjusting the clock works and can can be controlled by Policy'Kit policy.
User Experience
1. The initial user experience should not be much different to the old clock
Dependencies
- dbus system bus activation (in F8)
- Policy'Kit (in F8)
- Split-out libgweather (done upstream)
Contingency Plan
- Stay with the current upstream clock applet.
Documentation
Release Notes
The new clock applet in the GNOME panel has expanded to support additional international timezones in the display, as well as weather information for each configured timezone displayed. This work, which involved merging intlclock with the GNOME clock applet, provides all the functionality of system-config-date and the weather applet. Additional features include: users can choose arbitrary locations instead of principal timezones; UI enhancements for new and old functions; and full weather information shown in a tooltip.
User comments
- localized weeks, nim , 2007-09-30: many countries have the week start Monday, not Sunday. The current clock seems to force the Sunday view on everyone, and many users will find the current changes a sad joke if the week problem is not fixed too.
- It is not true that week-start-on-sunday is forced. The calendar uses the week start information that is encoded in the glibc locale definitions. Unfortunately, getting those fixed is not as easy as one would like... and I just verified that running the clock in de_DE.utf-8 does in fact give me weeks that start on Monday.
- UTC clock, nim , 2007-11-11: since all the times of Fedora events are given in UTC time (as they should) it'd be mightily convenient to add and UTC clock to the list. Right now it only accepts physical locations.
- jwb , Yes, I agree that having a UTC option in the clock list would be excellent. Would prevent me from having multiple applets running.
- knurd , 20080328 -- RFE to bring back UTC display in b.g.o ;
- multiple clocks:
- knurd , 20070928: I currently have two Clock applets in my panel -- one displaying UTC and one local time, so I can read both times without having to click on the applet. Will something like that be possible with one applet due to this rework? Or is my usecase such a cornercase (I at least know wwoods and some others are using the same trick)?
- You can have as many clocks on your panel as you want. But there are no plans to make a single applet show multiple times in the panel.
- knurd , 20070928: k, thx for the answer; I can understand that and won't further complain, just this is as final comment: putting a applet into the panel twice to get this feature is anything but obvious (ask me or wwoods ;-) -- someone even blogged about it when he was made aware of that concept after looking for such a feature for years iirc), thus letting the main applet display more timeszone directly in the panel IMHO would be a good thing. Anyway, thx for the work on the applet, looks really nice!
- juhp , 20071114: someone just pointed it out to me and I tried it in rawhide - looks very nice so far. How about an option to hide the world map to save a little space on the screen?
- That is what the expander is for...
- Yes, but that hides all the world clocks too: the map is cute but I don't know if it is always necessary.