Notices

Announcing a home screen plugin to display the time remaining until (or passed since) a number of configurable target dates.

After installing and loading the plugin (it should display automatically after first install, but you can enable/disable through the "Home" menu) you can configure it two ways: if you have never used it before it will display with a button stating "Click here to set up your countdowns", or you can always configure through the "Home", "Applet Settings","Countdown" menu options.

Once in the configuration screen you can add, edit, or delete countdowns (which each have some configuration options or their own) or change the general settings or translation options.

General settings allow you to select the "refresh" rate (how often it will change the numbers displayed), show or hide entries that have passed their target date, or configure the heading and normal font settings.

The "translation" options allow you to change how the units display in the countdown. For example, if instead of "years" you want "yrs" or "Y" you can change that. If you want all the units in a different language, you can have that too.

Entry specific options are title, date, and time for the entry, as well as which units to show (years, weeks, days, hours, minutes) and whether to hide the entry until closer to the target (a specified number of days).

Hopefully some people find this application useful. I wrote it because we have a bunch of events coming up I want to keep track of: moving, birthdays, vacations, etc.

You can get the plugin from this garage page: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/countdown-home/ I will upload to maemo-extras later today. Version 0.3 is now in maemo-extras

EDIT: Version 0.3 is now out. No major changes, but the package is now available through the application manager in the maemo-extras repository. Minor changes are: bug fix when displaying hours or minutes with more than one of the larger units selected. Feature added to hide leading zero units (ie. it won't show the "0 years" part of a countdown even if years is selected).

One-click install is available here: http://repository.maemo.org/extras/d...n-home.install
Maemo downloads page here: http://maemo.org/downloads/product/O...ountdown-home/

Pretty cool and useful!

Thanks!

Very nice. This is exactly the kind of app that should be bundled by default on devices in this class.
Thanks!

Looks very cool..... Now what to put in it...

Retirement.... vacations..... time to go home from work (5:00pm) time to drink the first beer (5:15 pm)

Brilliant, fiferboy, you never fail to amaze.

Thanks everyone.

In case anyone wonders what is next for countdown home, I have recurrence in mind (useful for birthdays, meetings, etc) which is the main reason I added the "hide until X days before" option (who wants to see a birthday is 364 days away?).

I almost put recurrence in this version, but my brain started going mushy with all the different cases and ended up taking it out and fixing some memory leaks instead.

Very nice, Fiferboy. Put alarms in it and the ability to sync with Google Calendar and this is all I need to replace the other calendar apps I was testing.

alephito, I have almost entirely gone off the idea of putting alarms in it, mostly because I am not out to replace any PIM packages. I realize your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I really just wanted a light-weight application to show me how much time is left to certain events (I am a big counter downer).

Even though I mentioned recurring events in my previous post, I am still not 100% sure I want to resurrect that idea. At first I thought it would be quite a nice addition, but the more I think of all the possible cases the more uncertain I am whether I will be able to do it. If I do put in recurrence, though, I am sure alarms will eventually follow.

So, fiferboy, how many programs do you plan on writing in 21 years, 29 weeks & 3 days? :P

qwerty, I already have my trifecta of plugins (statusbar, task navigator, and home - being large-statusbar-clock, personal-menu, and countdown-home) so I figure I need one "real" application to complete my resume.

I have actually written a fairly involved application (it was the first I wrote and the reason I got the tablet) but have not polished it to a releasable level. I have scattered a plethora of hints about this application in my screenshots, and another hint is in my garage profile. I have had a couple of inquiries, but it is not something that would appeal to the masses.

If anyone has ideas for other applications, I am always willing to consider them. I cannot promise I will be able to do it, though. I have another program that is about 50% done, and stalled.