ChimeMan :: A multi-platform presentation timer

[top] [introduction] [usage] [download] [bug/todo]

Liang Zhao, School of Informatics, Kyoto University (Japan), ver. 0.1 (2006-07-24), 0.2 (2007-02-14), 0.3 (2007-07-08)

Introduction

Being a session chair is not an easy task if you have to listen to the presentation and in the same time keep an eye on the watch in order to notice the presenter how much time is left to him/her. For such a purpose, a laptop-based timer software can be convenient since the display is usually big enough for both the chair and the presenter to see the (left) time (, thus you can concentrade on listening only).

ChimeMan is such a timer software designed for session chairs. It is written in Java, thus should work on Linux (my main OS), Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, and whatever if the Java Runtime Enviroment (JRE) is avaiable. As far as I know, there is no other alternative on the earth (this is why I wrote it).

Usage

This software is free. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), so you can use, distribute and modify it freely as long as the GPL allows (see License for detail). To use it, you will need JRE 1.5+ (see http://java.com/). For Linux, Java 1.6+ is better.

Screenshorts:

• running screen 1，running screen 2
• GUI frontend with icons (regular version)
• GUI frontend with no icon (lighweight version)

If you want to try it before download, just use this Java WebStart (Java plugin required).

Download

For the Java's security policy, you must run it at your local place in order to use the full feature (e.g., the full screen mode). Just download one of the folloing jar files and use it like this: java -jar chimeman.jar (for some OSes, double-click might works too). For detailed usage, try the Advanced menu.

• thin version: no icon nor sound file, about 50KB.
• lightweight version: no icon but with sound files, about 218KB.
• regular version with icons and sound files, about 250KB.

Note: source files and all documents are included in the jar file. Just unzip it to get them.

For a demo (if the Java Web Start doesn't work), try the Java Applet. It should chime at time 30s, 50s and 60s respectively.

bug/todo

The display centering under Windows seems somewhat strange. However, the same code works under Linux, so I guess it is due to a bug of JRE for Windows. In fact I have tried several different implementation and have rewritten the code for many times, but finally I failed to solve the problem and returned back to the first implementation. I don't want to waste any more time on this stupid problem, so (at least for now) it still remains.

Sometimes, but not often, it cannot start properly (I think it is due to the JRE). Just try a restart please.

Todo: full internationlization.