The WintextCom timer utility is a handy feature if you want to limit the amount of time you spend upon a particular task or accumulate a record of the total time you spend. The timer displays a dialogue box, interrupting your work in any application, when the required interval expires. The dialogue displays information about the number of intervals that have elapsed for the specified timer, and must be dismissed either by clicking the OK button or invoking a WintextCom global accelerator, it cannot be dismissed by pressing ENTER or Escape, or any other key except a global accelerator combination. This restriction is intentional, it ensures that you do not accidentally close the message box if it appears while you are typing into a word processor, for example.

Before you can use the WintextCom timer, you must enable it by including the setup directive "%%+" in the program configuration. The timer is disabled and inaccessible by default, preventing it from being accidentally invoked.

Once enabled, to set or read the timer, invoke the program and Windows information utility by pressing WindowsKey+Space in any application. The timer is part of the time display control that comes up in focus. It is hidden until it is invoked. Press Control+H to unhide the timer. There are nine timers in all, numbered 1 to 9. When unhidden, the time display is preceded by a set of angle brackets containing two numbers separated by a comma. The first number is that of the currently active timer, the second is the current elapsed time, which by default is in minutes.

Unhiding the timer does not activate it. Press Control+ENTER to activate the current timer and close the dialogue box. When you next display the timer by pressing WindowsKey+Space, it stops at the current value of the counter (the second number in the angle brackets), which by default updates every minute. By default, the alert dialogue is displayed every hour, with a 2-minute error margin. This means the timer alert dialogue is displayed at 62, 122, 182 minutes, and so on. When you activate the timer by closing the dialogue with Control+ENTER, timing resumes from the whole minute value shown in the counter, as if it had been stopped on the exact minute, any additional seconds at which the timer was stopped are lost. This means that if you set out to do something for a number of hours, for example, and you keep stopping the timer and starting it again, the actual time elapsed during active timing when the timer reaches 62 will be rather more than 62 minutes, then for subsequent hours, rather more than 60 minutes, ensuring that at least the required period has elapsed when the alert dialogue shows the appropriate number of base interval (hourly) elapses. Even if you do not stop the timer during the work period, the 2-minute (default) error margin will ensure that the time elapsed is marginally greater than the required hours.

Timing stops when the alert dialogue is displayed, and resumes automatically when the dialogue is dismissed. This includes both dismissing the dialogue by clicking the OK button and by invoking a WintextCom global accelerator, except in the case of WindowsKey+Space, which calls up the timer display itself and stops timing.

When the timer is displayed in the program and Windows information dialogue box, the following commands may be used to change parameters:

Control+Alt+1 through Control+Alt+9: Sets the current timer to 1 through 9, respectively.
Control+I: Initialises the current timer to 0 and activates it, closing the dialogue. All timers are initially 0 on program startup.
Pgdn: Increments the current timer by 1. Incrementing and decrementing the timer can be used to adjust its value or set a specific starting point.
Pgup: Decrements the current timer by 1, providing it is greater than 0. Timers cannot have negative values.
Shift+Pgdn: Increments the current timer by 10.
Shift+Pgup: Decrements the current timer by 10, providing its current value is not less than 10.
Control+Pgdn: Increments the current timer by 100.
Control+Pgup: Decrements the current timer by 100, providing its current value is not less than 100.
Control+1: Sets the alert interval to 10 units (minutes by default). The alert interval applies to all timers, it cannot be set for individual timer numbers only.
Control2: Sets the alert interval to 20 units.
Control+3: Sets the alert interval to 30 units.
Control+4: Sets the alert interval to 40 units.
Control+5: Sets the alert interval to 50 units.
Control+6: Sets the alert interval to 60 units (default, 60 minutes).
Control+7: Sets the alert interval to 25 units.
Control+8: Sets the alert interval to 15 units.
Control+9: Sets the alert interval to 45 units.
Control+0: sets the alert interval to 5 units.
Control+Shift+I: Initialises the current timer in non-interrupt mode, without closing the dialogue box. Press ENTER or click either the OK or Cancel button to close the dialogue without deactivating the timer, Escape to close the dialogue and deactivate the timer. In non-interrupt mode, the timer is active but alerts are disabled, so that the timer simply records elapsed time without interrupting.
Control+Shift+ENTER: Activates the current timer in non-interrupt mode, without closing the dialogue box. Press ENTER or click either the OK or Cancel button to close the dialogue without deactivating the timer, Escape to close the dialogue and deactivate the timer.
Control+H: If the current timer is active in non-interrupt mode, deactivates the timer. Otherwise, hide or unhide the timer.

All of the above commands except Control+H automatically unhide the timer if it is hidden.

Holding down the Control key replaces the counter value by the value of the currently-selected alert interval until Control is released, enabling you to verify or check this value. Pressing Shift while Control is being held down resets the alert interval to the default value (60 unless the timer has been customised).

Customising the Timer

The default timer parameters can be set using the "%%" setup directive. For example, the default settings would be represented as follows:

"-60000,60,2,+Time<32>slice<32>elapsed".

Do not include the quotes around the above, just the text between them. The textual specification comprises the following fields:

The first field, the initial minus sign, is a status character specifying that the timer is disabled and inaccessible. Use a plus sign instead to enable the timer, so that it can be unhidden with Control+H and the other commands are active.
The second field is the update interval in milliseconds. The default is 60000, meaning that the counter is incremented by 1 every minute.
The third field is the alert interval. This is the interval of the counter between alert actions. By default is it 60, and since the default update interval is per minute, this means that the alert action is triggered hourly by default.
The fourth field is the error margin. If positive, this value produces a lengthening of the alert interval for the first elapse, by the specified number of units (defined by the update interval, minutes by default).
The fifth field specifies the alert action. The first character is a status character. The default plus sign specifies that the following text is to be displayed in a message box, followed by the timer number and number of elapses in brackets, separated by a comma. If the status character is a colon, the following text string is executed as a directory entry, without stopping timing. If the status character is a minus sign, there is no alert action, as when the timer is active in non-interrupt mode.

The 3 numeric fields are optional. Their presence is indicated by a comma in the appropriate separating position. This means that if not all the fields are included and a comma is required in the action string, it must be embedded as "<44>". In the above example, spaces are embedded as "<32>". An alternative method of including spaces would be to surround the text by double quotes, not including the initial status character. If you specify just the initial status character, the status of the timer is set without changing the default parameters; therefore, the setup directive "%%+" enables the timer with default settings.

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The WintextCom Timer

Customising the Timer