Notices

Alright,
I just uploaded version 0.14.0 to extras-devel.
Besides fixing some minor issues this version adds:
- support for using custom images for drawing the digits,
- support for animated gifs,
- and a working twelve hour mode for the binary clock.

The "custom images" feature should work with any of the present "stock" clocks that write digits as text.
The "animated gifs" feature currently only works well with the "Decimal Clock".
For the animated gifs feature to work it is important that:
- the animated gifs do not loop,
- and the animation time is shorter than one second.
Overall the new functionality is still pretty experimental.
I'd appreciate if you report any bugs you find either here, or even better in the projects bugtracker.
The settings user interface is also not 100% correctly implemented yet: it displays "." and ".." as entries.
I'll fix this but I finally wanted to get this version out in the wild so that you can leave feedback about the new features.


With respect to the "main loop":
Actually, there is no real main loop in the code in the sense that you would see some "infinite loop" that sleeps for some time and keeps triggering the updates.
Instead I used gobject.timeout_add to add a timer which triggers the updates in intervals of one second.
If the show seconds option is false then the logic checks whether the value for minutes has changed to determine whether an update is needed.
This whole logic is in "/usr/lib/hildon-desktop/advanced-clock-plugin.py".

In the current code for handling animated gifs I also used gobject.timeout_add to "install" a timer which triggers the updates for the animations.
Actually, this could also be a possibility to get an animation done.
Though, you have to keep in mind that the animation should not loop (i.e., eventually finishes) and it does not run longer than one second.
Else, for those who really want a fast refresh for having animations all the time could change the refresh delay in the gobject.timeout_add calls in "/usr/lib/hildon-desktop/advanced-clock-plugin.py".

I just made an upgrade from 0.13.0 to 0.14.0 and...

... it does not startup anymore so no clock in the statusbar anymore.

Are there any clues to get it work again?

I just uploaded version 0.14.1 to extras-devel which should fix the problem.

Edit: There was still a problem in packaging which affected the new functionality.
Edit 2: Well I was somewhat clumsy on packaging this time.
Hopefully, 0.14.5 is in a good shape.

Mine did the same thing, fiddled with it for an hour or so then removed it. Reboot and old clocks back.

Try this: [Announce] Queen BeeCon Widget - Flipclock Widget

If you experience issues with Advanced Clock Plugin please run the following as root and post the output here:
Edit:
As far as I can tell version 0.14.5 installs well.
Though, there still might be issues for others.
To help track down these issues please post the output as mentioned above.

So I could just make a set doing up all the numbers something like this?

waiting patiently for a flip clock, :P

working on it...

Exactly, with the above mentioned limitations (animation time < 1 second and the animation has to be non-looping).
For an example of how things work look at the provided test-animated image set.

For animated images you need one animated image (animated gifs work, don't know about other animated formats) with the digit name, e.g. "1.gif" and another static/non-animated image showing the final frame of the animated image called, e.g. "1_static.gif" (the "_static" suffix is important).
This is important because the animation is only played for digits that have changed since the last update.

Also, I noticed there are currently some "issues" when using transparency.
I.e., the frames of an animation are drawn one onto another.
Hence, when later frames have transparent regions that had not been transparent in earlier frames the earlier frames will "shine through".