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Background Background's a program which I wrote a long time ago under NextStep1.0. The problem with the earlier version of the program was that it really didn't work very well, under 2.0. Also, it was weird (to be polite). The new Background is an entirely new app which provides just so much functionality as I need in a background program. Basically, it tiles an image on the background window, and goes away when you log out. Really, that's all I want in a program! Background is quite simple to use. The first time you run it, you'll get the standard dark gray background. Boring, no? To cause Background to load up and display a background, click the `Open...' option on the main menu, and go off to find some tiff (or eps) file to use as a background. "Open" the file, and Background tiles it around on your workspace's background window. Background also saves away the name for future reference - the next time you run Background, it will load the same file. Background also can open tiff and eps files from the Workspace. I guess I have my reservations about using it as your viewer, but that's up to you. What I use this feature for is for when I find a file in the Workspace, and don't want to navigate the directories to the file again in Background. To open the file into Background, go to Workspace's Tools panel (Command-3 is the quick way), and double-click Background's icon. This method comes in handy in many cases (for instance, Background's Open Panel won't show /NextLibrary/Images/Scene_movies subdirectories, while Workspace's Command-O [File->Open as Folder] option will.) To install the program so that it will show up in the Tools Inspector, make sure that it is on your Workspace search path. The best way is to put it into your personal Apps directory. Doing `make install' in Background's main directory will automagically perform the correct incantations. I make absolutely no guarentees about Background. It's probably a very buggy program, and might crash often and early. I've not had any crashes, but that's a given (if I had crashes, I wouldn't be releasing it). In any case, I doubt it is capable of taking any other programs out with it. It also doesn't have a whole lot in the way of functionality. About all it can do well is to be set to autolaunch, and then load an image when it finishes launching. It doesn't do colors, or the X-weave, spinning eyeballs, or anything, unless you're willing to load in the little icons to do it. You get what you pay for. Enjoy, scott hess scott@gac.edu Gustavus Adolphus NeXT Campus Consultant Independent NeXT Developer PS: If there's enough interest shown in the background I used to generate the Info panel and the icon, I'll make that availiable for anon ftp, also. It's about 118k, when lzw-encoded. I don't think many would care to toss that out on their archive site :-). Or at least not too many of them. PPS: The tiff images in the BoinkOut app make neato backgrounds, too. You can grab those using that nifty Mach-O extract script in Perl which was posted to comp.sys.next awhile back.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.