Hi Jim, Dannie, Sarah, and Others,
I had a long discussion about constructing a "say time" AppleScript
and using the 24 hour clock on another list last year, and can
summarize a few points that apply to this script, and also ways to get
the time announced under Leopard and Tiger. The time format used is
set by your selection under the "Formats" tab of the International
menu under System Preferences. If you go to the clock on your status
menu bar (either use Control-F8 or VO-M twice to navigate there, then
use Left or Right arrow keys to move to the clock), arrow down to
"Open Date & Time…" and press return, you'll find a button at the
bottom of the "Date & Time" pane after the phrase, "To set date and
time formats, use International preferences.", labeled "Open
International". Pressing this button (VO-Space) will open the
International Menu. Navigate (VO-RIght arrow) to the "Formats" tab
and select it (VO-Space). The format for dates, time, numbers, and
currency is generally specified by your region. Places like the U.S.,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have A.M. and P.M., by default. I
think that only countries in Europe, like the U.K., or Ireland, use
the 24-hour time format by default.
Once you choose your Region by pressing (VO-Space) the pop up button
for the first selection, you specify the default settings for date,
time, numbers (your currency symbol and the symbol you use to separate
thousands, etc.), currency, and measurement units (metric or "US").
To change the default format setting for the date or time category you
need to press the "Customize" button in that category. The problem is
that the instructions tell you to drag and drop your format
preferences to the field if you want your time to be reported as 19 28
instead of "7:28 PM", for example. So what I had to do was copy a
default format that appeared in the time field of the customize menu
when the U.K. region is chosen into the time field for the customize
menu when the U.S. region is chosen. Delete the time entry format
that's in the field before you paste. Once you do that, the pop up
button for your Region will show a "Custom" entry that you can
select. If you simply select a different region, you get the wrong
default currencies, etc. As an aside, this probably applies to
settings on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad (when it arrives),
too. I set my iPod Touch to use an Australian voice by selecting that
region under Settings, but it affects the default format for phone
number entries I input directly into Contacts on that device rather
than syncing from my Mac's Address Book.
The basic command these scripts use is the unix "say" command. If you
open terminal (Command-Shift-U to the Utilities folder, press "T e"
for Terminal, and Command-Down arrow to open), you can type in the
word "say" (without quotation marks), followed either by a word, or a
phrase enclosed in quotation marks, and when you press return, you'll
hear that word or phrase spoken in the default text-to-speech voice.
Unix also has a "date" command. When you type "date" in terminal,
(without quotation marks, and followed by a carriage return), the
current date and time will be returned, in the format specified for
your region. The AppleScript that Jim attached is just parsing the
system variable for the date (and time), which is represented by the
variable "current date", into the bits that the author wants to use.
The other thing that can be helpful is to add a command like:
delay 0.5
before the "say" command to give VoiceOver a chance to stop speaking
its last phrase. (You can make the interval longer by increasing the
number of seconds in the argument.)
The Mac lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to commands or
AppleScripts. In Snow Leopard, this is facilitated with Keyboard
Commander, but this can be done in any version of OS X by using the
Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse menu under System
Preferences. I suspect that the date and time script that is being
used for Snow Leopard is a variant of the "Current Date & Time.scpt"
script supplied in the sample AppleScripts under the /Library/Scripts/
folder. Users with older versions of OS X (e.g., Leopard or Tiger),
should be able to open Finder and use the Command-Shift-G "Go to
Folder" shortcut to find this file. Type or paste in:
/Library/Scripts/Info Scripts
into the text field after using the Command-Shift-G shortcut, then
press return. Open the script in the AppleScript Editor with Command-
Down arrow and run it with Command-R.
Another easy way to run AppleScripts is to use a program like Spark to
assign a keyboard shortcut. This is what many early VoiceOver users
did using Travis Siegels "saytime" AppleScript that you can download
from his Softcon page:
http://www.softcon.com/mac/
The "saytime" script is on the scripts page and Spark is on the page
for compatible Mac programs. (Note that this script was written
assuming a default time setup that was NOT configured for a 24-hour
clock -- this is the way that Macs come if you do not configure the
International menu format setups.) When you run Spark, go to the File
menu and arrow down to the "New Hotkey" option, then right arrow to
choose "AppleScript" for the type of Hotkey assignment. You'll be
able to paste in an AppleScript, assign a name, and select a shortcut
hotkey sequence under Spark. This can be easier for new users to use
(especially on the older versions of Mac OS X), because shortcut key
assignments have to be made when the app in question is NOT running.
(This is because they're defined in the preferences file for each app,
and this gets overwritten with current definitions each time you quit
an application.) System-wide shortcuts would require a restart.
Spark uses its own demon to run the assignments, so it's simple to set
up.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
Jim Gatteys wrote:
Dannie!
I was looking at time scripts and found parts of other scripts that
were pieced together from the net--but they were just chunks from
other scripts. It seems to run a bit faster than the apple time
script but I'll have to admit I don't understand its reasoning and
how it works. I did test it and I'll attach it here. I didn't
write, just pieced together stuff that seemed to work.
Jim
Daniel Rowe wrote:
Hi
That folder seems to be missing unless it's hidden.
Dannie
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