chronoskin handbook 2.4
The handbook · Second edition Revised

Keeping a log of your working day, from the first line to the yearly report

chronoskin is a small command for writing down what you did and when. This book explains all of it in twelve chapters, in the order you will need them.

Start reading Look something up 
# the whole idea, in four lines
$ chronoskin start "page proofs"
$ chronoskin stop
$ chronoskin today
09:10  11:45  page proofs   2h35

Listing 1. Chapter 2 takes this apart line by line.

Contents

Part one. Every day Pages 1 to 88

Part two. Now and then Pages 89 to 184

Four ways in

$

In ten minutes

Chapters 1 and 2, and nothing else, for a first working day.
?

By question

Forty short answers, each pointing at the page that explains it.
A

By word

The glossary: sixty terms the book uses in one sense only.
#

By page

The index and the search, for readers who know what they want.
This edition

Second edition, revised in March 2016

Ten of twelve chapters revised for version 2.4

Chapters 3 and 9 are rewritten for version 2.4. Leave an address and we will write when a chapter changes, and at no other time.

  1. Handbook
  2. Part one
  3. 3. Clocks that disagree
Chapter 3 · Pages 24 to 40 · 22 minutes

Clocks that disagree

What chronoskin does when your laptop, your phone and the calendar on the wall hold three different opinions about the time.

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3.1 One clock is the rule

Every entry is stored against a single clock, and it is never the one on your wall.

chronoskin writes each start and stop as a moment in universal timeGlossary: the one clock every entry is stored against. It has no zone and no summer time. and remembers, beside it, which zone you were in. Nothing is converted until something is shown to you.1 That is why a log copied to another machine reads the same there.

$ chronoskin today --zone
09:10  11:45  page proofs   2h35  Europe/Oslo
13:00  15:20  index         2h20  Europe/Oslo

3.2 Travelling

When the zone of the machine changes, the next entry simply carries the new one. You can ask to see a day either way:2

  • --as-lived shows each entry in the zone it was made in;
  • --as-here shows all of them in the zone you are in now;
  • --zone NAME shows them in any zone you name.
Note. Totals never depend on the view. Two hours are two hours in every zone.
Changed in 2.4. --local no longer exists and stops with an error. Use --as-here.

If the machine has no zone

A machine without a zone is treated as universal time, and chronoskin says so once on the first entry of each day.

See also

Contents
  1. 1Chapter 8 shows the two fields as they stand in the log file.
  2. 2The default is set by view.zone; see page 141.
  3. In printThis section is on pages 24 to 29 of the paper edition.
  1. Handbook
  2. Glossary

Glossary

Sixty words this book uses in one sense only, with the chapter that introduces each.

Suggest a term
Showing 7 of 60 terms. Page numbers follow the paper edition.
Term Meaning Status Chapter Page
as-hereA view that shows every entry in the zone you are in now.New327
as-livedA view that shows each entry in the zone it was made in.Stable326
breakA gap between two entries that is shorter than the rounding step.Stable444
dayFrom four in the morning to four in the morning, unless set otherwise.Changed212
driftThe difference between two machines' clocks at the moment of a merge.Under review9126
entryOne line of the log: a start, a stop and what was done between them.Stable29
epoch fileThe older log format, read but no longer written.Removed8119
New Changed 60 Stable Under review Removed
F to L

X to Z

No terms under X, Y or Z

The book has not needed a word that begins with one of these letters. If you think it should, say which.

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  1. Handbook
  2. Index and search

Index and search

Four hundred index entries and every sentence of the twelve chapters.

Back to the contents

4 places for "summer time"

  • 3.3 The missing hourChapter 3 · page 31

    On the night summer time begins, an entry that runs through two o'clock is one hour shorter than it looks.

  • 7.2 A month that is an hour longChapter 7 · page 94

    Monthly totals count real hours, so March and October differ when summer time changes.

  • 10.4 view.zoneChapter 10 · page 141

    A named zone follows summer time; a fixed offset such as +01:00 does not.

  • Glossary: summer timePage 176

    The hour added to local clocks for part of the year.

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