KosherJava

An earlier “Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map” post demonstrated the use of JavaScript to render the bearing to Har Habayis on a Google Map. A more detailed follow-up post “Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map” dealt with detailed technical information on these calculations. The main Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map page [...]

Moshe Wagner who wrote the Zmanim GUI notified me in August that that he created a command line interface for zmanim using my Zmanim API. The technical approach of using reflection was similar to the way I used reflection in the Zmanim Clock Applet, but he took it to new heights. Sample use of accessing [...]

Question:Where is the main method? Answer:This is a more technical variant of the “How do I install the Zmanim API Program?”, but coming from someone who already knows that it is a Java program that can’t be installed, but assumes that it can be run. The main method is the entry point to a Java [...]

Question: How do I install the Zmanim API Program? Answer: The Zmanim API is not a program that can be installed, but a Java programming library often referred to as an API (Application Programming Interface). This is a building block to be used by programmers who want to easily include zmanim in their own programs. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

I was recently contacted by Moshe Wagner who wanted to know if there was a graphical front end to the Zmanim API. While there are various programs that do use the API, there is no standalone Java GUI that uses the API (the zmanim clock applet is not easily useful for looking up zmanim for [...]

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 [...]

There are now 3 native iPhone programs in the iPhone App Store that display Zmanim. Pocket Luach from Tebeka Software, Zmanim from Avi Shevin and the iPhone Siddur from Rusty Brick. It is interesting to note that 2 out of the 3 use an open source Zmanim library. Zmanim uses Ken Bloom’s zmanim code (the [...]