Notices

lol Well I think I'll make a new thread as an annoucement and link to it from this one... because there's a lot of valuable information here, but at the same time we're going on 66 pages now and it can be a bit overwhelming for people who haven't been keeping up for the last year or so lol

Don't worry I'll make it nice and obvious for everyone though!

Thanks all!

OKay guys you've all been very patient with me on this one so after going two rounds of Turkey Dinner for Thanksgiving this weekend I finally managed to sit down and wrap things up to the point where it's at least somewhat ready for a "sneak peak" and some feedback on the new version! So without further adue:
https://garage.maemo.org/frs/downloa....0-1_armel.deb

A few notes about installation first:
- Getting this into extras-devel is going to be more of a hassle because it means I have to write configure and proper make files, which I've never done before, so for now I'm just letting you guys have a preview through garage. This however means that dependencies are NOT AUTOMATICALLY PULLED IN, and must be installed manually!!
Make sure you have "Extras" repo enabled, and if you run into any dependency problems while trying to install Flip ensure that you've got the required packages in place already. For reference Flip depends on:
libglib2.0-0,libgconf2-6,libosso1,libalarm0,libgtk2.0-0,libgstreamer0.10-0,libhildonfm2,libsdl1.2, libsdl-image1.2,libsdl-gfx1.2-4,libsdl-ttf2.0-0
- This version WILL CONFLICT with the old Flipclock, so don't expect them to be able to run side by side... I recommend disabling all alarms and uninstalling the old Flip before installing this!

And now for the good stuff... here's the current features
- HUGE stability and speed improvements over old version (thank you C)
- Complete theme support; I'm not talking skins here, but rather complete themes... check out the "night" theme (which is my crude demo... see the "needs your help" notes below). Themes are completely customizable and can independently be packaged to allow others to create new themes and have them available as "Add on" packages.
- AlarmD integration has been vastly improved. All alarmD processing is now handled by a separate DBus process (that means no more "please wait" screens!) which synchronizes all of your alarm settings automatically (you should see a little "AlarmD Sync'd" message pop up from time to time when this happens). This should also help eliminate those old "phantom alarms" that people were running into in the past.
- Flip now automatically turns up your tablet volume when an alarm plays, so you don't have to worry about forgetting anymore!
- "Insomniac mode" has been improved to try to ensure that it won't get "left on" by accident; this really has more to do with the improved stability of the app than anything else though...
- Oh, did I mention the improved visual effects on the alarm settings pages? ;-)
- Lots of other cool stuff?...

Remember this is a Beta/Preview release for you guys who have been so dedicated and enthusiastic about this project (I got tired of working on this without being able to get real feedback from you guys!). As such there are some important things to note here (I need your help with!):
- The graphics are NOT finalized yet... ESPECIALLY the "night mode" which I kind of threw together yesterday in a desperate attempt to get this thing ready for you today. As you can see, I'm a CODER, not a DESIGNER... So hopefully before the first official release Ciro has some time to help get the mess sorted out ;-)
Specifically I think the "switch theme" button is missing on the "night theme"... don't worry, it's in exactly the same place as on the day screen, I just forgot to put the label there for it...
- The file-chooser dialog box for selecting your alarm sound is a bit slow to show up the first time... I only noticed this the other day, but I'll try to get a waiting screen or something going on in the mean time... anyways, if you press "choose file", just wait for the chooser to show up k? It works, it's just slow the first time...
- There's no "clock settings" screen yet... I wanted to get it done, but after the horrible mess I made of the "night theme" alarm screen I just couldn't bring myself to torture you guys any more with my own graphics... so once Ciro gives me a hand with that, it'll be done and expose all the nice options for you (including the Amazing new mood picker!)
- There's no LED flashing code or anything yet. For me that wasn't a hugely important feature since I can't test it on my N800's anyway, but I will try to add it back in later if people want it... also, different alarm playback modes WILL be possible in the future, but probably not in the first release...i.e. FM radio, media player, etc...
- I'm sure there's a few other things to mention, but I've forgotten them in the excitement, so...

The point of this release is to give you a basic working copy of the new version of the app so you guys can test, give feedback and enjoy! Let me know what you think, let me know if the thing crashes, heck let me know if you can't get it to install and we'll get things sorted out! But I've been working on this for far too long by myself here and I wanted to get you guys up to speed as that last "Nixie" release we had was just terrible stuff...

(And yes, there will be a Nixie theme, along with another one or two that I have in mind... along with whatever you guys come up with! Documentation will be another big task that I'll ask for help with, especially related to theme development).

(Ooh almost forgot, Flip will be able to run on X86 linux (not just tablets), I just didn't bother making up a test-release for it yet as the tablets are really the target audience here... but should compile and run on Maemo 5 no worries, though I haven't got an N900 to try with... hopefully nice and speedy too!)

Thanks all!

jolouis-

Looks very nice. I'll play with it a bit more later.

Uninstalled earlier version (after checking for alarms). Went into red-pill to check dependencies. For me, I was only missing libsdl-gfx1.2-4, installed, back to blue pill.

Installed the new flipclock. Loaded fine, like I said looks very nice. More to come.

I removed my alarms, unnstalled flipclock and installed the version linked in this thread.

First impressions:
- In the night mode the parts of the digits not illuminated to make up the current time are a bit too bright. It would be nice if there was a bigger difference between lit up and dimmed lines.
I dont have the old one to compare with side by side but in general the look of the numbers in the night mode is not as pleasant as the old version. The numbers seem to be too close to eachother (look at how '10' shows for instance) and the previously mentioned dim vs lit up lines in the numbers.

- I noticed that the icon for flipclock was not removed from my Extras section after uninstalling and hence the new version did not create a new entry. The old icon doesn't launch anything so my only way to launch flipclock now is to do it from the xterm's command line. How do I solve this?

- Any chance for having the color picker being its own button instead of on the single/loop button?

Apart from that it looks like this will be a fantastic update and THANKS for continuing working on one of my favorite apps for my tablet.

Nokia should send you an N900 so that 'those boys' can get this app finetuned for them as well since this app is so valuable. Do it Nokia!

Yea I just tweaked the digits yesterday to give it a bit more of that "underlying digit look", but I agree there's not quite enough strength there; general feedback, should I try them down at 10% (right now the "non-lit" digit parts are at about 30%), or just ditch it and go back to the way they used to be?.
Not sure about the positioning, as they're exactly the same as they were on the old clock... if it bugs you though you can tweak the theme file to shift the digits around a bit... if everyone agrees then I'll update the night theme by default to have a bit more space to it...

Hmm that's bizarre... the old icon should actually launch the new version still, so not sure. You can try restarting the tablet to see if that clears it up, otherwise you can manually remove the .desktop file and install the new one, should fix it. Let me know if you need a hand.

Oh bugger! I forgot that was still there, I thought I'd taken that button out! Turns out I only took the "label" out, not the thing that actually triggered the colour picker! Okay I'll do a quick update to take that out as the colour picker is supposed to be on the "yet to be built" clock-settings page!

I'm all for that ;-) Already trying to get my hands on an N900 through the PushN900 program, but we'll see... in the mean time I think one or two people who've already got prototypes have contacted me in the past about this app so I'll see what they say about this new version...

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks, a hard-reset did indeed make the icon launch flipclock again.
I'm all for bringing the un-lit digit parts down..10%... 0%

Thanks again!

Didn't have any problems with my icons when installing. Worked just fine from the menu and Personal Launcher.

Alarms work well (or at least I didn't see any problems in my test). Didn't realize the color picker was there until slartibart mentioned it. I like having the whole spectrum to choose from.

I was surprised to see a different alarm setting menu in night mode. Very different, pretty cool though, I like it. Sound picker didn't take too long the first time, couple of seconds, maybe 5 max.

Only thing I saw: When loading, I get a pop-up that says "flipclock started", it covers up part of the screen, so all I see is "Flipclock the Ultimate ............." as the screen doesn't refresh from the started popup. Other than that, looks great.

Excellent work, well worth the wait. Can't wait to see the rest of the updates.

Did some tests. I'm still having problems with some songs playing, but I think it was mentioned before that's more of a system thing than flipclock. I like how the theme changes for the alarm setting screen.

When pressing the + or - buttons on the device, flipclock crashes/exits. I was hoping they would act as volume control. Sometimes when flipclock goes off I don't want to get up, but I want to listen to what's playing. I like how the volume maxes out for the alarm, but I can't really play it without disturbing people. Would it be possible to adjust the volume of the alarm while the alarm is going off?

Pretty impressive but let me suggest some improvements:

>Nokia should send you an N900
I agree, Nokia shoud invest in people that actually do something.
Since the new version will have a completely different set of "discussions" I propose a brand new thread asap

The new FlipClock seesms nice - some changes in controls are more intuitive indeed - like changing the themeing and colors.

So here goes my feedback ... change Theme in bright dailight mode shows fine, but in changed night-time mode the button doesn't show - even though if you click on that spot, it does change back to daylight mode.

I set up Alarms for the morning and nothing played back.

I also set a song as an alarm - which played in the older flipclock, but no alarms worked on this new version.

I like the seconds bar at the top with the seconds slider - nice touch - though not needed (as yet).

I will give it a try some more and report back.

Ciroip - as mentioned before - I am still lokking up to you to start a new project and bring your super gooey talents to work on something equally or more useful. Kudos buddy :-)