Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Let's move to v0.8.5

I am saving v0.9.0 - v0.9.9 of Wall Flype for testing.  As of right now I am implementing some of the final functionality of the program specifically, saving the value of the timer controlling the interval of AutoMode and whether or not the timer will advance while Wall Flype is not running.  The timer behavior really is my biggest concern at the present moment.  There are two type of behaviors the timer could have if the program were terminated in between the timer's interval elapsing that I considered, 1) when the application is terminated, meaning that Wall Flype is not running and implicitly the timer is no longer operating and approaching another AutoMode event, the remaining timer value could be saved and when the application is restarted that same value would be used to continue making the time required for the timer event to fire ( time before until elapse + termination length + time after until elapse), 2) upon termination, the timer value could be saved in a format that would allow the application upon start up to calculate how much time has elapsed during termination and apply that to the timer value as if it had been running non-stop.  I think because of this difference in behavior I will present with user with a choice of using one of the two in the settings of the application in the future.

At the moment, I will go with the first option and see how users of the application like that behavior.  Some aspects will have to be worked out with the second option before implementation.  The first I have thought of, if the program is in AutoMode and upon start up the interval is considered elapsed the program would try to change the wallpaper while Windows is still starting up and other programs are still loading.  This may cause a conflict if other programs are saving settings to the main .ini file or may cause a slow computer to start up even slower with the added tasks it must now perform.  The ideal fix for this would be to have the program determine that this is a start up situation and add just a few minutes to the interval to allow for Windows and other programs to fully load before Wall Flype attempts to change the wallpaper.  Secondly, I was thinking of a way to save the date and time to be able to calculate how much time has elapsed during a termination.  The format I have considered is (using my current date and time) 2010.0209141139.  The dissection of this number is year 2010, month 02, day 09, hour 14, minute 11, and second 39.  This is constructed in this way because of the way time, days, and month repeat themselves numerically speaking.  I believe saving the date and time in a format a such will allow for easy calculation of the elapsed time or time of termination.

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