Anuko World Clock Tips and Tricks

The Anuko World Clock Development Team has compiled this web page with tips and tricks on using Anuko World Clock. These tips and tricks may help you to customize Anuko World Clock for your needs.

Note: We are looking for improvements to this page. If you have a tip or trick to share please let us know!

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Configure Your GMT Clock Correctly

If you need a GMT (UTC, or Zulu) clock make sure to configure it correctly. If you use London time zone for it unmark the "Adjust for daylight saving time" option. Make sure to change the label accordingly. Alternatively, use a city, which is on true GMT time such as Casablanca. One other option is to select a true GMT time zone for your GMT clock (not a city). This time zone is usually called (GMT) Casablanca, Monrovia. Double-click your clock or right-click it and select Options - Time zone to open its settings. Then click on the Change... button to the right of the Location field. Select the Time Zones option on top of the city list (to the right of the globe), chose Casablanca time zone and apply your change. Do not forget to label your clock appropriately.

Configure Action on Double-Click

If you got used to seeing the system calendar after double-clicking the clock you can configure Anuko World Clock to do the same. Select either the "Show calendar" or "Adjust system Date/Time" option in the "Action on double-click" field on clock settings page in Anuko World Clock Preferences. The "Show calendar" option will show Anuko World Clock Calendar. The "Adjust system Date/Time" will show the native system calendar. Notice that the action on double-click is configured separately for each clock.

Swap Computer Time Zone from Anuko World Clock

If you are traveling and need to localize the system time to your current location, you can configure Anuko World Clock to quickly change the computer's time zone to match a selected clock. Add the following line into the main section of your zonetick.ini file:

setlocalinmenu=1

Restart Anuko World Clock after making changes to the file. You will no see an additional option to "Make clock local" in the right-click menu. Selecting this option will set your computer’s time zone to match the time zone in the clock you selected.

Use Alarm Macros to Output Useful Information

Alarms in Anuko World Clock support some macros. A macro is a special text string, which is replaced with some useful information when your alarm fires. The following macros are available in Anuko World Clock:

${label} - prints clock label
${alarm} - prints alarm description
${tz} - prints clock timezone name
${city} - prints city name associated with the current clock
${country} - prints country name of the city associated with the current clock
${location} - prints city or timezone associated with the current clock
${date} - local date when alarm was triggered
${time} - local time when alarm was triggered
${cdate} - date when alarm was triggered, according to the clock's timezone
${ctime} - local time when alarm was triggered, according to the clock's timezone
${version} - prints current Anuko World Clock version
${compiled} - prints Anuko World Clock build date

Note: For date and time macros you can specify the same formatter as for clocks, but in brackets. For example:

${date(d MMM yyyy)} or ${time(HH:mm:ss)}

Synchronize with a Local Time Server

If you need to synchronize your computer time with a local time server you can easily do so by typing in server name or IP address in the Server field on Time Synchronization page in Anuko World Clock Preferences.

Your server must support time synchronization over NTP protocol using UDP port 123. Make sure that UDP traffic on port 123 is allowed between your machine and your local server.

If you use a firewall make sure that the timesync.exe process is allowed to communicate over NTP protocol to external systems. Timesync.exe is a component of Anuko World Clock, which runs as a Windows service and sets computer time.

World Map with Higher Resolution

WARNING: this is a "die-hard" exercise for your video adapter. Try this only when you understand how video-cards work. Having a proper video card driver (from the manufacturer) installed is a must for any such experiment.

High Resolution Texture

Since version 3.7 Anuko World Clock supports high resolution map on 3D globe. Now the globe consists of 8 surface textures - 4 along the equator for each hemisphere. Modern video cards support textures up to 4096x4096. Theoretical maximum map resolution for such video cards is 16384x8192 (NASA Earth observatory provides textures up to 21600x10800 resolution).

Practically, performance is limited by video-memory size / bandwidth and system memory size. We were able to load a 8192x4096 texture on 1Gb Windows XP system equipped with 128Mb GeForce 6600GT video card. It run at 32 FPS.

That system has managed to load 16384x8192 texture, but we'd have to increase memory to 2Gb and turn on texture compression before. Loading was slow but the resulting picture was much more clear. Here is the Suez Canal:

Some manual work is required before using high resolution maps. Your should edit your zonetick.ini with WordPad or Notepad and add these values into map section:

[map]
texScalerX=2
texScalerY=1

After that Anuko World Clock is able to load map up to (maxT*4) x (maxT*2), where maxT is maximum texture size supported by your video card. Then download an appropriate image from the NASA Earth Observatory, shrink it to appropriate size, which shoud be power of two to avoid load-time shrinking, save it as map.jpg into Anuko World Clock install directory. Try to run Anuko World Clock and see the result.

To reduce video-memory consumption you can enable texture compression by adding tex_compression=1 there. Keep in mind that it reduces picture quality, increases load time, but works faster when video-memory is a bottleneck.

Adjust Clouds Transparency

Clouds transparency is adjustable by specifying clouds_alpha value in the common section of zonetick.ini:

[common]
clouds_alpha=150

Range is 32..255. 255 makes clouds solid and 32 makes them hardly visible. The default value is 192.

Use Additional Registry Options to Configure Anuko World Clock

The following additional registry options may help to configure Anuko World Clock in secure, restricted environments.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\no_updates controls whether the software update feature is available in the product.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\no_cloud_map controls whether the cloud map is available in the product.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\no_news controls whether the RSS news feature is present in the product.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\no_city_photos controls whether the "View city photos" option is available in the right-click menu in the product.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\no_preferences controls whether users are allowed to change their clock settings.

All the above values are DWORDs. Set them to 1 to disable corresponding feature or to 0 to enable it. Restart Anuko World Clock for your change to take effect. If you want to prohibit your users from manually changing this and other settings protect the HKLM\SOFTWARE\WR Consulting\ZoneTick\ registry key.

Minimize Demands for CPU Time on Windows Terminal Server

If you intend to use Anuko World Clock on a Windows Terminal Server it is important to minimize its demands for CPU time by following these recommendations.

Use only digital skins.
Do not use any semi-transparency for desktop clocks (move the transparency slider to the left).
Disable dynamic highlights.
Reduce dimensions of your desktop clocks.

Sponsor Developing a Feature You Need

We maintain a long wish-list of potential product improvements in Anuko World Clock and balance our development work according to market demand. If many users request a certain feature it gets implemented faster. Implementing features that are not often requested may be postponed. If you are an enterprise customer you have an option to accelerate implementing features you need using a fee-based sponsorship approach. We provide quotes for such sponsorship orders at cost to us. However, the work is usually conditionally combined with a purchase of either a worldwide or site license. Please use the Anuko World Clock Customization Request form to request a quote.