http://www.kosherjava.com A weblog about Zmanim, Kosher Coffee (Kosher Java) and other odds & ends Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:28:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/09/11/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-3-0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-3-0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/09/11/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-3-0/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:53:34 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=1298 The Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was recently updated to version 3.0. This new release adds a number of new features to the Zmanim Map version 2.0 update released in March 2010. The main change was updating the Google Map API version from the deprecated v2 to v3. This change increases performance and adds much better support for mobile browsers. The upgrade also means that a Google Maps API key is no longer required. This makes it easy to drop it into any site without any configuration (contact me for details). The technical notes on the original Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map post are still relevant, with very little having changed since the initial implementation. The following is a partial list of the new features:

• A number of additional zmanim in the More Zmanim tab, including tchilas and sof zman kiddush levana (if they occur on that day)
• A link to download a 12 month Zmanim calendar directly from the map (using the same spreadsheet used in the Zmanim Calendar Generator). Clicking on the link from the Zmanim tab will generate a calendar with most typically used zmanim, while clicking on the link in the More Zmanim tab will download the full set of zmanim. These are available as the Calendar Type option in the Zmanim Calendar Generator
• Increased use of jQuery and jQuery UI for formatting the zmanim tables to better match the site look & feel
• Refactoring to make the code more robust and slightly more maintainable
• Timezones for all of Israel now display the timezone of Asia/Jerusalem as opposed to the Asia/Gaza returned for parts of Israel by the GeoNames TimeZone web service

From a technical perspective there were a number of changes required due to updating the Google Maps API from v2 to v3. These include:

• v3 no longer supports tabbed info windows, so the tabs are now implemented using jQuery UI
• Renaming of a number of classes and functions such as GLatLng to LatLng
• A number of functions that were part of API v2 were removed in v3. One example is the removal of radians in the LatLng that had been available as GLatLng.latRadians(). These missing functions required for the direction to Yerushalayim calculations are now supported in the Zmanim Map using prototypes

]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/09/11/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-3-0/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/05/09/kosherjava-zmanim-api-released-under-the-lgpl-license/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kosherjava-zmanim-api-released-under-the-lgpl-license http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/05/09/kosherjava-zmanim-api-released-under-the-lgpl-license/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 20:43:23 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=879 Until this point the KosherJava Zmanim API has been released under the GPL V2.0 open source license. This had the effect of forcing any application written using the library to release it’s source code under the same license. Being that the Zmanim API is a library, the LGPL is a more appropriate license. The LGPL allows developers to use the KosherJava Zmanim API, yet keep their application code closed source. Only changes to the API itself (such as ports to different languages) would have to be released as open source. I had in the past on request released the source under the LGPL (the Zmanim API .NET port has already been released under the LGPL with my permission), and with the recent 3/27/2011 SVN checkin I formally changed the Java Zmanim API license to the LGPL 2.1 (not the newer LGPL 3.0). The next 1.3.0 release will be the first formal release under the LGPL. In one case the change to the license required permission from developer who wrote code used by the the Zmanim API, and this was done.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/05/09/kosherjava-zmanim-api-released-under-the-lgpl-license/feed/ 8 http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/03/23/zmanim-api-in-svn/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-api-in-svn http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/03/23/zmanim-api-in-svn/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:19:52 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=834 Thanks to Jay Gindin, the Zmanim API source code is now in a publicly available SVN server. The Google Code project can be found at code.google.com/p/kosherjava. This will have a number of benefits to the project. It will more easily allow users to find the code, ensure that they have the latest code, track changes, and allow reverting to prior versions in case an issue arises with newly checked in code. It will also allow me to stop the manual backups (part of the projects Ant build script) done as part of every development build. The repository has the new hebrewcalendar package mentioned in the recently posted FAQ: How do I Calculate the Jewish/Hebrew Date for …?. This new code is under heavy revision, and there will be changes that will likely break code using the current alpha version. The pace of changes to the interface will likely remain stable once the first beta version is released (probably after Pesach). The next step will be to touch base with various people who have copies of the API in their own SVN to either update or link to this official project SVN server.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2011/03/23/zmanim-api-in-svn/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/05/30/zmanim-api-1-2-1-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-api-1-2-1-released http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/05/30/zmanim-api-1-2-1-released/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 02:36:11 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=657 The Zmanim API 1.2.1 was released today. Changed in this release were the addition of a few very early Tzais zmanim, and the removal of references to the GregorianCalendar in favor of the base Calendar class to ease Noah Blumenthal’s use of the Zmanim API in a zmanim application for the BlackBerry. This change has no impact on functionality as tested using Yitzchok’s new JUnit tests. Additionally, the JavaDoc Zmanim API documentation was modified to clearly indicate that zmanim can return nulls. A followup post will have details on this. The main download is the Zmanim 1.2.1 release zip file that includes source files and JavaDoc documentation. Also available for download (included in the above zip file) is the main zmanim-1.2.1.jar and the zmanimAstronomical-1.2.1.jar that only includes the AstronomicalCalendar. The removal of the GregorianCalendar was in this class. Additional detail on the downloads can be seen on the Zmanim Download page]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/05/30/zmanim-api-1-2-1-released/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/03/14/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-2-0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-2-0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/03/14/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-2-0/#comments Sun, 14 Mar 2010 05:32:53 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=436 The availability of the Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was originally announced on December 30, 2007. At the time there were a number of bugs related to the Google Map API. These bugs were reported to Google and eventually fixed. Since that time, the only change was a minor JavaScript fix for IE. The Bearing to Yerushalayim worked, but the zmanim tabs had a major issue because the timezone calculated was done based on the user’s current browser timezone. This made it tricky to check zmanim in a different location or timezone than the user’s current timezone. I recently updated the map to look-up the actual timezone of the latitude and longitude selected by the user. This was implemented by doing a look-up at the geonames.org timezone web-service. The timezone is passed to the Zmanim API and used to generate the XML output of a list of daily zmanim that is displayed in the map. Since the Olson timezone database changes a few times a year, there will almost certainly be cases where the proper timezone can’t be determined. Some of these are changes of timezone names, such as the change from Asia/Calcutta to Asia/Kolkata (my host will not run the TZ Updater tool). In these cases a simple mapping between the old and new was added to the map. In cases where the timezone can’t be determined the timezone will default to GMT. Ocean locations within 10 km of land will use the closest landmass, but anywhere beyond 10 km will default to GMT. One issue with using the geonames.org webservice, is that when it is down, the map will timeout. I experimented with various ways of dealing with this, but unless my host updates the Java version from 1.4, they are too complex to use at this time. See the Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map post for technical details about the original implementation.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/03/14/bearing-to-yerushalayim-and-zmanim-map-2-0/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/01/24/zmanim-api-1-2-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-api-1-2-released http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/01/24/zmanim-api-1-2-released/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:07:29 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=409 The Zmanim API 1.2 was released today. The only change in this release is the removal of elevation as a factor in the calculation of all zmanim besides sunrise and sunset. Updated JavaDocs now reflect these changes. Please see the Elevation Now Only Impacts Sunrise and Sunset Calculations in the Zmanim API post for additional information. I would like to thank the various people who contacted me on the subject. The main download is the Zmanim 1.2 release zip file that includes source files and JavaDoc documentation. Also available for download (included in the above zip file) is the main zmanim-1.2.jar. The zmanimAstronomical-1.1.jar that only includes the AstronomicalCalendar was not impacted by this change, but the version has been updated to zmanimAstronomical-1.2.jar for consistency. Additional detail on the downloads can be seen on the Zmanim Download page]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2010/01/24/zmanim-api-1-2-released/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/11/05/plans-for-a-zmanim-api-faq/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=plans-for-a-zmanim-api-faq http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/11/05/plans-for-a-zmanim-api-faq/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:19:56 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=199 Questions communicated to me via the contact page far exceed the number of comments in the blog. In the hope of clarifying the most common questions related to the Zmanim API and to a lesser degree other parts of this site, I plan on a series of FAQ posts that will hopefully cut down on the number of questions. The list of FAQs may eventually be consolidated into a FAQ page.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/11/05/plans-for-a-zmanim-api-faq/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/05/18/zmanim-calendar-generator-can-now-output-less-zmanim/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-calendar-generator-can-now-output-less-zmanim http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/05/18/zmanim-calendar-generator-can-now-output-less-zmanim/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 03:00:44 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=174 After numerous requests, the Zmanim Calendar Generator can now output a less extensive list of zmanim. While the “full” calendar option (the default) generates an Excel spreadsheet with 108 columns of zmanim, the “standard” output generates a spreadsheet with 15 columns containing the most commonly used zmanim. The exact list of what constitutes commonly used zmanim is likely to be tweaked over time. The spreadsheet was initially designed for developers as a sample of the various zmanim available in the API . Developers can compare the output of their zmanim using the API, or a ported version of the API to the spreadsheet for accuracy. Based on feedback, many people use it to generate shul calendars, and wanted a less daunting list of zmanim.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/05/18/zmanim-calendar-generator-can-now-output-less-zmanim/feed/ 3 http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/03/27/zmanim-api-11-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-api-11-released http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/03/27/zmanim-api-11-released/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:49:02 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=137 The Zmanim API 1.1 was released early this morning. Information about what changed in this release can be seen in previous posts about various beta and patch releases. A last minute change involved the removal of the misheyakir calculations commonly used by the Syrian community. The removal was due to the various different minhagim used, and Chacham Yosef Harari-Raful not endorsing any one, or including any, in his calendar. The API is flexible enough to be used for any calculation wanted by the various Syrian shuls even without “native” support for a built in “Ateret Torah” misheyakir. Some missing JavaDocs were also added. I would like to again thank Rabbi Rachamim Ashkenazi the publisher of a zmanim calendar for the Syrian Community, and Victor Grazi for his input, testing and technical expertise used for adding the new “Ateret Torah” zmanim. The main download is the Zmanim 1.1 release zip file that includes source files and JavaDoc documentation. Also available for download (included in the above zip file) is the main zmanim-1.1.jar and the new zmanimAstronomical-1.1.jar that only includes the AstronomicalCalendar and supporting classes. Additional detail on the downloads can be seen on the Zmanim Download page]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/03/27/zmanim-api-11-released/feed/ 0 http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/02/25/zmanim-api-11-beta-3-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=zmanim-api-11-beta-3-released http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/02/25/zmanim-api-11-beta-3-released/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:57:32 +0000 KosherJava http://www.kosherjava.com/?p=96 The third beta release of the Zmanim API 1.1 is now available on the download page. The main change in this release is the addition of zmanim based on the psak of Chacham Yosef Harari-Raful of Yeshivat Ateret Torah. These zmanim were requested by members of the Syrian Community. Other changes in this release include various additions and fixes to the API JavaDocs. I hope to post some detailed information about the new “Ateret Torah” zmanim in the near future. I would like to thank Rabbi Rachamim Ashkenazi the publisher of a zmanim calendar for the Syrian Community for his help with the “Ateret Torah” zmanim. The main download is the Zmanim 1.1 beta 3 release zip file including source files and documentation. Also available for download (included in the above zip file) is the main zmanim-1.1_beta_3.jar and the new zmanimAstronomical-1.1_beta_3.jar that only includes the AstronomicalCalendar and supporting classes.]]> http://www.kosherjava.com/2009/02/25/zmanim-api-11-beta-3-released/feed/ 0