Clock in PTE Menu

[stonemason]

I use a menu page from which to run my slideshows using run and return. Does anyone know of any way that a clock using the system time can be displayed on that menu page?

Thanks

Geoff

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Geoff

I assume your menu page is an Exe? I think the only thing you could display on there would be either a JPEG Gif or PNG. If you know how to construct a Gif, I assume it could be done depending on how much time span you want to display. Had a quick look at some clock gifs available & hopefully, this one will display.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Geoff,

You won't be able to display the system time/date, etc., but it is fairly easy to construct a clock which will keep accurate time and display that. Back in the stone age of PTE I demonstrated a "Road to Cimarron" slideshow which displayed a map and a real-time clock which had second, minute and hour hands. Essentially I took a fairly large image of a clock and saved the components as PNG files. There was a PNG second hand, PNG minute hand, PNG hour hand and then the clock with it's numbers minus the hands. The hands were stacked in three layers and between keyframes the proper increments of rotation were calculated for the desired display time and everything was as accurate as the system clock.

You could build this clock, control its appearance with a mask and use the opacity feature to control when it displayed. It's not a real simple construct, but it would work as you have indicated. The only issue would be making certain that it was running in sync with the actual time your menu was displayed in real time. If it was only relative time (time of display) you need it would be easy but if your want accurate time of day you would have to regenerate the exe just before display time and set the clock accordingly.

Tom was working on one which had great promise - you might want to read the following:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/15346-pte-transparent-clock/?hl=%2Bclock+%2Bdisplay#entry101745

Best regards,

Lin

[stonemason]

Thanks for the information. It's really the system clock I wanted to see to keep an eye on the time when doing a slideshow evening. I'll keep an eye on the one that Tom's working on (thanks for the link Lin) and see how that develops.

One other question either of you may know the answer to. Is it possible using a menu, and run and return slideshows, to force the show to play on the second monitor using extended desktop?

Best regards

Geoff

[davegee]

Geoff,

If you google "insert clock in PowerPoint" there is a video of how this is done in that package. I have no idea if the method is transferable but if not it could be suggestion for Igor.

DG