Does VCSetEventTimer to time of day work?

[ajith]

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  Are you suggesting we all use the 24 hour convention when talking on the forum, or are you suggesting that the program assume a 24 hour format?

AFAIK VC will assume a 24 hour format if you don't specify AM or PM and so will I.

My reply is a little late, but what I meant was the latter. I'd like the program to have one unambiguous way to specify time. And it shouldn't depend on whether the specified time is in the past, etc., A past time should just mean that the time is specified for the next day, like all alarm clock settings! This way of doing it might be technical, and not conforming to conventional language like "remind me to take the dog out at 10". But once we have that technical, unambiguous way of inputting time, making it understand conventional language could be done as per individual preference using tools like Python Scripting etc.,

Just my 2 paisa!  Just ignore this if it doesn't make sense or too demanding

PS: Thanks, nime5ter for the creative solution. I am yet to try it out.

[nime5ter]

I think it's been a while since you've had time for the VC forum, Ajith, so you may not have noticed that quite a few of the new VC users have made it clear they're not comfortable with things like Python scripting.

It turns out that what makes intuitive sense to a black-box user is rather different than what makes intuitive sense to programmers. 

But it means that it will be less work/stress for James to keep the front end as layperson-oriented as possible and leave the Python workarounds to folks like you.

[jitterjames]

It is not too demanding because this is the way it already is.

[ajith]

I think it's been a while since you've had time for the VC forum, Ajith, so you may not have noticed that quite a few of the new VC users have made it clear they're not comfortable with things like Python scripting.

It turns out that what makes intuitive sense to a black-box user is rather different than what makes intuitive sense to programmers. 

But it means that it will be less work/stress for James to keep the front end as layperson-oriented as possible and leave the Python workarounds to folks like you.

I understand. But the programmer friendly interface was what attracted me to VOX, in the first place! I guess I'm in the minority now. Everyone cannot be pleased at the same time, I guess 

[ajith]

It is not too demanding because this is the way it already is.

Hmm... in that case I'd have thought the SetEventTimer command would accept a time parameter like 00:30 without a workaround, and the event would have fired at 30 min past midnight, no matter what the current time is. What am I missing?

[jitterjames]

Everyone cannot be pleased at the same time, I guess

I don't really see why not.  We can and in many cases do have the best of both worlds.  In any case VC is not and never will be for dummies.  We can try to make it as user friendly as possible but this should not hurt programmers.  I will always put functionality first, and you can basically do anything you want in python if it is not already possible in the core program or a plugin.

Just so we are all clear, going back to the original topic.  There is not, nor has there ever been any ambiguity in the way that times are defined in the VC.SetEventTimer action.  You may use a 24 hour clock or a 12 hour clock as long as you format it correctly.  Both methods are correct and precise.  In the last public release it was simply not set up to automatically add 24 hours if you specified a time that was before the current time.  I have already added this functionality and it will be in the next VC2 update once it gets uploaded.

You should also know, in case you are not aware that the event will not be triggered every day.  It is a one time thing, so if you want it to automatically repeat every day you need to add another call to set the event timer in your triggered command.

[jitterjames]

Hmm... in that case I'd have thought the SetEventTimer command would accept a time parameter like 00:30 without a workaround, and the event would have fired at 30 min past midnight, no matter what the current time is. What am I missing?

I don't think you really followed the course of the whole thread, but in particular, after we established what the problem was, I posted this:

http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=1484.msg12900#msg12900

The problem was identified, and I said I would fix it, by adding 24 hours if the time was "before now".

[ajith]

I don't think you really followed the course of the whole thread, but in particular, after we established what the problem was, I posted this:

http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=1484.msg12900#msg12900

The problem was identified, and I said I would fix it, by adding 24 hours if the time was "before now".

Oops! I missed the part where you said you meant to fix it! 
Sorry for wasting your time!

[jitterjames]

No problem.  It is an easy thing to miss.

[jitterjames]

By the way, if you want to trigger an event at the same time every day, then the google calendar plugin is a nice way to do it.  It won't work for sunrise and sunset though since these times change over the course of the year.