I have not found anything for Ubuntu that suits my needs.

I need a simple timer that can show a user defined message.

I have wine installed, so many Windows programs will work.

Thanks,
Andy

On 11/16/2022 9:41 AM, AK wrote:
> I have not found anything for Ubuntu that suits my needs.
>
> I need a simple timer that can show a user defined message.
>
> I have wine installed, so many Windows programs will work.
>
> Thanks,
> Andy
>

Maybe something like this would work.

https://apps.kde.org/kalarm/

Paul

"AK" <scientist77017@gmail.com> wrote

|I have not found anything for Ubuntu that suits my needs.
| | I need a simple timer that can show a user defined message.
| | I have wine installed, so many Windows programs will work.
|

If it were me I'd use a VBScript. I don't know
if that's orth your trouble. You might have to install
Windows Script Host. (scrrun.dll, etc) Last time I
tried Wine it was a mess, divided into 32 and 64 bit
and difficult to use actual Windows libraries. So I
don't have easy instructions.

It's a very simple script:

For i = 1 to 5
WScript.Sleep 1000
Next

Msgbox "This is the message."

Sleep pauses for a given number of ms. This script
waits 5 seconds.

On 11/16/2022 1:19 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> "AK" <scientist77017@gmail.com> wrote
>
> |I have not found anything for Ubuntu that suits my needs.
> |
> | I need a simple timer that can show a user defined message.
> |
> | I have wine installed, so many Windows programs will work.
> |
>
> If it were me I'd use a VBScript. I don't know
> if that's orth your trouble. You might have to install
> Windows Script Host. (scrrun.dll, etc) Last time I
> tried Wine it was a mess, divided into 32 and 64 bit
> and difficult to use actual Windows libraries. So I
> don't have easy instructions.
>
> It's a very simple script:
>
> For i = 1 to 5
> WScript.Sleep 1000
> Next
>
> Msgbox "This is the message."
>
> Sleep pauses for a given number of ms. This script
> waits 5 seconds.

WinXP had "at". The temporal aspect can be handled by the scheduler.

at 23:41 some.bat

Linux happens to have a look-alike "at"

at 11:41 PM "/usr/bin/some"

But when I tried the Linux version, a check
with "atq" showed it was in the job queue, but
it didn't fire as near as I could tell. Probably
needs some systemctl command to get the equivalent
of the atd daemon running.

In Windows, "at" was discontinued past WinXP, because
it was considered a security risk. It's possible it
was running jobs as SYSTEM, and if you put cmd.exe
as the executable, that would provide a way of elevating
for a limited user. Something like that.

You could even incorporate some WINE in there if you wanted.
I expect the Linux version just runs as the user who registered
the job in their personal queue.

The purpose of using a ready-made calendar style application,
is not because it delivers sparkle ponies, it's because
packages like that are more likely to have been inspected
when put in the tree. Whereas crappy little "at" likely got
half-hearted attention. I'm sure it would work with
enough pampering.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210815082014/https://opensource.com/article/21/8/linux-at-command

One reason I'm not a huge fan of WINE, is the out-of-the-box
configuration in the popular distros isn't very good. And it's
possible the materials involved in a proper installation of
WINE, have "licensing issues". The lawyers likely prevent
a curated set of "winetricks" from being executed.

In Linux, it used to be the same issue with the NVidia driver
versus the Nouveau driver. They likely wanted to make
the NVidia driver install for NVidia cards, but their
"license esthetic" prevented that. You do occasionally find
a distro where the NVidia is installed for you. The only
reason I don't "clamor for Nouveau", is it loses communications
with my 1080 and has no VPU recover coded up. Which yields a
black screen and is no fun at all.

Paul

"Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote

| > Sleep pauses for a given number of ms. This script
| > waits 5 seconds.
| | WinXP had "at". The temporal aspect can be handled by the scheduler.
| | at 23:41 some.bat
| | Linux happens to have a look-alike "at"

Isn't that different? An alarm clock is not the same
as a timer. But it wasn't clear what the OP needs.
The only time I ever use such things is to test code
speed. The last time I used an alarm clock was for
jury duty... maybe 15 years ago. :)

On 11/16/2022 4:04 PM, Mayayana wrote:
> "Paul" <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote
>
> | > Sleep pauses for a given number of ms. This script
> | > waits 5 seconds.
> |
> | WinXP had "at". The temporal aspect can be handled by the scheduler.
> |
> | at 23:41 some.bat
> |
> | Linux happens to have a look-alike "at"
>
> Isn't that different? An alarm clock is not the same
> as a timer. But it wasn't clear what the OP needs.
> The only time I ever use such things is to test code
> speed. The last time I used an alarm clock was for
> jury duty... maybe 15 years ago. :)
>
>

If you wanted an interval timer, it would probably be faster
to write one.

Visual Studio in the IDE, has some templates you can use.
One of the templates opens a window for you. And all of the
code to do that, is right there for you. There is an
Event loop, and on an older OS, it listens for Expose
events, which tells you when you should be redrawing
a portion of the screen.

Yonks ago, Windows developers used to complain about
the "ten pages of code I have to write, before I can do anything".
And the VS template solves that problem.

And I know that VBS has all this stuff too. And that's
what you would write your interval timer in. That would be
a lot simpler than my method.

An interval timer is probably "good enough" with one
second resolution, so a "sleep(x)" is likely to be
sufficient to time an interval.

If you could find a QT5 package for Windows, you could also
code up your interval timer in that, and as the purpose of
QT is to be cross platform, a quick recompile in Linux
(against Linux QT -dev libs) and you'd have the same look
and feel there. Your interval timer would be a folder with
about 80MB of code in it :-) The Internationalization package
would be 20MB or so, by itself. But the advantage would be,
you would not need WINE.

The only thing I wouldn't do, is write it in Python. Python
has caused way too much aggravation to ever be considered a
possibility.

*******

As a copy/pasta programmer, look at the great materials out there...
A search on "Linux interval timer" got me some code. The function
isn't great, but it's a start.

https://www.makeuseof.com/linux-timer-mechanisms/

Paul

On Wed, 16 Nov 2022 13:19:36 -0500, Mayayana wrote:
> If it were me I'd use a VBScript. I don't know
> if that's orth your trouble. You might have to install
> Windows Script Host. (scrrun.dll, etc) Last time I
> tried Wine it was a mess, divided into 32 and 64 bit
> and difficult to use actual Windows libraries. So I
> don't have easy instructions.

WSH is included with the default WINE installation and its default system
profile. At least in Ubuntu 16.

It's trivial but, WINE's version of WSH is not 100% compatible with
Microsoft's, where it doesn't implement the `WSH` object which is an
undocumented alias for the `WScript` object.

I found that out the hard way, since I was using `WSH` inplace of `WScript`
in most of my VBScript & JScript, because it's shorter to type. There may be
other undocumented things which are absent in WINE's. But the good thing is,
it can be used to detect whether the WSH is WINE's or Microsoft's.

"JJ" <jj4public@outlook.com> wrote

| WSH is included with the default WINE installation and its default system
| profile. At least in Ubuntu 16.
| | It's trivial but, WINE's version of WSH is not 100% compatible with
| Microsoft's, where it doesn't implement the `WSH` object which is an
| undocumented alias for the `WScript` object.
| I can forgive them for that, seeing as how I'd never heard of
that alias. :)