Set timer to pause

Question

How can I pause TTimer in Delphi with keeping interval? So, for instance, I have TTimer that has 10 seconds interval and when I set timer to pause after first 7 seconds of working, it will save its state, and then when I resume timer it will fire after remaining 3 seconds.

Thanks a lot guys!

Answer 1

Timer.interval :=1000;
ICount:integer;

In create procedure set icount to 0

Procedure timerevent(sender:tobject);
Begin
    If icount=10 then
    Begin
       // do proccess
     Icount = 0;
   End;
   Inc(icount);
End;

Now you can stop the timer anywhere

Answer 2

You cannot do that with a TTimer which is a loose wrapper around the SetTimer API.

In order to do this you would need to keep track of when the timer started and when you paused it. Then you would know how much time was left. When you need to pause, set the timer Enabled property to False and set the interval to be the amount of time remaining. Don't forget that after the timer fires for the first time you need to reset its interval to the true interval.

As you can see from the above, a TTimer is not the best fit for your problem. But, having said that it would not be terribly difficult, and quite fun, to produce a TTimer variant that supported pausing the way you desire.

Answer 3

That's not how the Windows timer facility works, and that's not how the Delphi wrapper works, either.

When you disable the timer, keep note of how much time was remaining before it was due to fire again. Before you re-enable it, set the Interval property to that value. The next time the timer fires, reset Interval to the original value.