Category: Site News

Zmanim Map 3.5 adds Date and Algorithm Selection

Vintage Map with CompassThe Zmanim Map was recently updated to version 3.5. This new release adds a number of new features (listed below), and some technical changes over the previous Zmanim Map 3.0 release. With this release, the main focus of the map has shifted to the zmanim tabs. The direction to Yerushalayim tab with davening directions using both the rhumb line and great circle route to Yerushalayim is still present, but is no longer the default tab.
Zmanim Map v3.5

  • The date can now be selected by the user. In previous versions the date was always the current date on the user’s computer (though the map always supported passing the date on the URL using the undocumented date=1969-02-08 parameter). The current date is still the default, but the user can now change the date.
  • The calculation algorithm is now selectable. The Zmanim API supports both the USNO and NOAA algorithms. The map has always used the USNO algorithm, and this remains the default, but users can now use the NOAA algorithm.
  • The Zmanim tab is now the default tab. This reflects user feedback indicating that most people use the map for zmanim.
  • An About tab now provides a mini user guide and general information about the map.
  • The timezone look-up now uses the Google Time Zone API. Previously the map had been using the Geo Names web service. Since the elevation service also uses Google, the change to a single stable source will hopefully result in fewer outages.
  • The currently selected tab persists across location changes, so if you were viewing zmanim for a location, and changed the location to see how the zmanim were affected, you will no longer have to change tabs after each move.
  • Candle Lighting was added for Fridays. Erev Yom Tov will not show candle lighting at this point.
  • Performance improvements, minor enhancements, bug fixes and refactoring

Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map 3.0

Vintage Map with CompassThe 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). Zmanim tab v3The 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 and was replaced by the google.maps.LatLng class. These missing functions required for the direction to Yerushalayim calculations are now supported in the Zmanim Map using prototypes

KosherJava Zmanim API Released Under the LGPL License

LGPL 2.1Until 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 Zmanim API, and this was done.

Zmanim API Now in a Public SVN Server

Cyber VaultThanks 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.

KosherJava Zmanim Code Now in GitHub

With Google shutting down Google Code at the end of 2015, the KosherJava Zmanim source code has been moved to GitHub.

Zmanim API 1.2.1 Released

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