KosherJava

Moshe Wagner recently released ZmanimPlasma for the Linux platform. This KDE Plasma desktop widget displays the Hebrew date and zmanim on a Linux desktop. The zmanim calculations use Moshe’s C++ port Zmanim CLI wrapper that enables a C++ program to call the Java Zmanim API. There are no current plans to make this widget available [...]

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 [...]

Question:How Much Earlier is Sunrise on Mount Everest Due to Elevation?Answer:The greatest sunrise and sunset elevation effect on Earth is on Mount Everest (at 27.988056 N, 86.925278 E as seen on the Direction to Yerushalayim Map). With an elevation of 8,848 Meters (29, 029 feet), sunrise would be up to 15 minutes and 31 seconds [...]

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 [...]

I have received a few emails over the past year or so about the use of elevation as part of the calculation of various zmanim in the API. All releases of the zmanim API up to the current 1.1 release, use elevation to affect the calculation of all sunrise/sunset based zmanim. While my footnote on [...]

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 [...]