Copyright 1991 Scott Hess. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that this copyright notice appear in all copies. The copyright notice need not appear on binary-only distributions - just in source code.\
Scott Hess makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.\
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\f0\b\fs28 Help\
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\f0\b\fs24 TimeMon
\b0 gives a graphical representation of where the CPU cycles are going. Well, it's coarse, but better than nothing. Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of my earlier
\b TimeMon
\b0 program
if you've seen both, many of the differences are quite obvious!\
There are three general usages of CPU time
system time (time in the kernel), user time (time executing a user's code), and nice time (user time that has been set to a low priority). There is also one other kind of CPU time
idle time. That's time during which there is nothing productive for the computer to do. The operating system
\pard\tx960\tx1920\tx2880\tx3840\tx4800\tx5760\tx6720\tx7680\tx8640\tx9600\fc0 twiddles it's thumbs during that time (something has to be done!).\
\b TimeMon
\b0 shows each of these times with a different color. Luckily enough, the
\b NeXT
\b0 supplies four colors. Black shows system time, dark gray is user time, light gray is nice time, and white is idle time.\
\b TimeMon
\b0 shows these times in a sort of pie-chart view within
\b TimeMon
\b0 's icon. There are three layers. The innermost layer is updated according to the
\b Update Period
\b0 (set that at the top of this window). The next layer is the average of some number of previous update periods. This can be set be the
\b Layer Factor
\b0 option above. Lastly, the outermost layer is the average of a larger number of update periods
The square of the
\b Layer Factor
\b0 , to be precise. Of course, both values are automatically stored in the defaults database for you.\
\b TimeMon
\b0 has been extensively tuned to reduce the amount of CPU time that it requires. I felt that this was well worth the effort expended, since if the program is run at all, it will be run for the entire login session. As a safety net, I also cause
\b TimeMon
\b0 to run at a reduced priority
thus, if the system is very busy, TimeMon will hopefully not run at all.\
Even so, there still are probably times when you think even those few cycles are needed for something else. Adjusting the
\b Update Period
\b0 to a higher value will cause
\b TimeMon
\b0 to use less CPU, as will upping the
\b Layer Factor
\b0 . Quitting also works. Since
\b TimeMon
\b0 displays in it's own icon, I felt that the Hide/Unhide abstraction of
\b NextStep
\b0 did not really apply to causing the program to pause. Thus, I provided the
I am a recent graduate of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Mn. (If you're considering a school, and like NeXTs, consider them
at last count they had something like 40 or 45, for a student body of only 2200!). In the spring of 1990, I wrote the reasonably popular shareware terminal emulator
\b Stuart
\b0 , which was also included in modified form in the NextStep2.0 operating system as Terminal. I'm currently busily at work on the future version (well, versions) of Stuart, but I keep getting interrupted by people with other work to do. Unfortunately (?!?), that work pays more per month than Stuart does in 6 months, so I have to put Stuart aside periodically.\
Right now you might say I'm at loose ends. While I'm still quite busy programming, mainly for myself, but also for others, I'm also not "wired down". If you've got a decent-sized project (>4 weeks) which you need to have done right, and requires good knowledge of NextStep, Unix, networking and other communications, or whatever, feel free to contact me.\
I hope that you enjoy this program. I certainly enjoyed creating it!\
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