Yes, this is scriptable. But it would be nice if mIRC had a built in swatch identifier. Returning "01.06.2003 198" for example.

Rather than an identifier like that, it would seem smarter to have a "beats" flag for the $asctime identifier and friends, and perhaps a $bmttime which returns the base time for swatch time, so for your example you'd use $asctime($bmttime, dd.mm.yyyy bbb) Where b specifies beats,
b = 1
bb = 01
bbb = 001

That seems more expandable to me and it is also consistent with the way mIRC currently handles time identifiers. It would also make it really easy for people to include beats in their timestamp setting in mIRC.

swatch? beats?
Did I miss something, or is there a unit if time I've been unaware of until now?

Swatch time, also called internet time, in the begining was a clever marketing ploy by the Swatch Company. But it has evolved into more than that, it is a timezone independant method of determining the time of day. Obviously something like that is good for the internet where people will be in multiple timezones. Basically what they do is divide the day up into 1000 "beats" so therefore a "beat" = 1 minute 26.4 seconds. BMT is the GMT of swatch time (why they couldn't just use GMT I don't know, perhaps, if I'm remembering correctly, it's because the Swatch Corporate Headquarters happens to be in BMT), anyway, what they do is eliminate the concept of hours minutes and seconds and just use beats. 1000 beats = a day, therefore noon BMT = 500 beats. Personally, I don't use it, determining what "time of day" a beat is is a pain since in school you aren't taught "we eat breakfast at 334 beats" you're taught "we eat breakfast at 8:00am" so it makes it hard to realize what time of day you are talking about. Obviously that is necessary since the clock on your desk isn't in Swatch time so you need to be able to convert on the fly which is hard since you have to determine the number of seconds between 00:00 and 08:00 then divide by 86.4, maybe it's just me but I can't easily do that in my head. Personally I find it easier to just say "8am GMT-5" or "1pm GMT" when I'm talking to someone somewhere else in the world, but some people seem to like Internet Time for whatever reason, the concept is nice, but seeing as how almost nothing in the real world uses Internet Time, it becomes a nuissance imho.

It also sounds like you have to be constantly conscious of your timezone with Internet Time too, which makes it just as difficult (if not more) to calculate your timezone from GMT. Noon may be 500 beats, if you live near Swatch HQ... but Noon in Chicago is what, 920 beats?

If the military can carry out strategic attack plans with 24 hour military/international time, I think I'll stick to that. Nice idea, but they'll never teach the world to speak Espranto ("the international language") either.

- Raccoon

Yeah exactly, why toy with a system that has worked for everyone for 100+ years?

(English seems to be taking over the world. Or that's at least what was prophecized.)

This would be too complex. There are so many possibilities adding something like this. But there is one basic thing we can agree on. GMT can be used with $asctime to get the date for Swatch Internet Time, or S.I.T., I guess. So $swatch could be used for @001. It needs to be expressed in all three numbers with the @ sign in it. That's how the format is done on swatch.com if I'm not mistaken. So one simple identifier of @swatch would be good enough.

I'd like to add something else if Khaled decides to make a simple $swatch identifier to return @001 only. In the upper right hand corner, underneath the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, would be a @001 for example.

I think Swatch time for timestamping would rule, but then log dates need to be done in GMT, I guess, and that's that.

It'd get too complex with swatch time being an identifier.

Here's another idea. GMT won't work since it's too long. And it can be written in different ways too, 24 or 12 hour and with am/pm and seconds or no seconds and such. GMT would get too complex. So let's say we use Swatch Internet Time. Everyone will always have the same format too. @001 is how it's written. I'm saying it's nice and compact. Now below the close, minimize, and maximize buttons would be perfect in that MENU bar, as an option.

codemastr, do you have a working e-mail address I can show you my screenshot of?

You also need to calc the date component according to the @itime, not your local time.

If you want my email, look in my profile, I'd rather not post it on the forum since that will just result in spam.

Last time I checked I got an error back regarding a relay error or something.

I've created a little swatch thing for mIRC, and there are some noticable advantages. While there are 24 hour possibilities, 60 minute possibilities, and 60 second possibilities, there are only 1000 possibilities for swatch time. 500 separates the day in half. 250 separates the 6 hours. 125 separates the 3 hours. Then it gets complex figuring out the time after that, but is still worth the simplicity I think.

<rant>
The trouble with Swatch time is that nobody uses beats in real-life, and most likely never will. If I find out that something is happening in 5 minutes that immediately makes sense to me and in my mind I can comprehend that length of time. However if someone says something will happen in 12 beats from now I'm left wondering how long that is, and whether that time has passed while I was sitting here thinking about it. Just doing the calculations means converting beats to seconds (60 * 60 * 1024 / 1000) - 86.4secs/beat, multiplying that by the number of beats (86.4 * 12) - 1036.8, and then converting those seconds into a meaningful time (1036.8 / 60 mins, 1036.8 % 60 secs) - 17mins, 17secs. Thank God for $calc and $duration because if I didn't already know there were 86400 seconds in a day I wouldn't have even been able to do a single one of those steps in my head . Well I could have eventually, but maybe not within 17 minutes and 17 seconds.

And what does this have to do with having a $swatch identifier in mIRC? Nothing and everything. Nothing in the sense that this entire post is based on my personal feelings on the whole fiasco. Everything in the sense that hopefully other people feel the same way that I do - that 'Internet Time' is little more than hype and a gimmick on Swatch's part, and that such things shouldn't be given the time of day (no pun intended) when it comes to serious methods of retrieving and calculating time.
</rant>

I guess it's only a matter of time before we'll see if Swatch time will fail or not.

I'm yet to confront it in any practical sense, going by that I'd come to the conclusion that it's not exactly a resounding success. All websites I visit, and indeed my own website, when quoting the time, refer to both local time and then GMT.

This isn't a reply to any specific post, more of a rant about flawed marketing schemes.

How does swatch time deal with days in a week, days in a month, months in a year, or weeks in a year? How does it deal with leap years and leap day? How does it deal with the fact that a day isn't exactly 24 hours? If you're gonna come up with a new time measurement, why not complete it? Sorta defeats the purpose when you do it half-assed. And what's wrong with the time standards that have existed for centuries? Also seems swatch time is just a cheap imitation of space time (re: nasa.gov & Star Trek geeks), where time is measured by percent of the day and percent of the millenium passed. All of which are multiples of 10.

There are exactly 24 hours in a day, there is no question about this.
The only exception to this is leap second, which I don't think even Wall Street worries about.

Swatch Time is merely 1000 divided by 24 hours (or 86400 seconds).

Days, weeks, months, years, leapyears, etc.. are exactly as they are now, unchanged.