scott@erick.gac.edu (Scott Hess) (03/09/91)
Hi, all. I've been getting lots of questions lately, like "what neat things have you been doing lately?" Well, I've been doing lots of neat things. The question is, how many have I finished? Well, tonight I finished one. I also started it tonight, so that's a little unfair, but so it goes. I needed a rest from my studies, and this was a nice, quick, happy thing to do, methinks. What is `this'? `This' is a program to tile tiff or eps images on the background of your NeXT running NextStep2.0 (I don't think there's any real requirement for 2.0, that just happens to be where I'm at. Go ahead and modify it for 1.0, if you want). Just a couple days ago, I downloaded the wonderful BoinkOut app (note where the author, Samuel Streeper, is listed in the Info Panel of that app as working - I suspect this might explain why I don't have my tech. docs yet? :-). Anyhow, most of the machines here are still lowly '030 machines - barely capable of launching BoinkOut, much less running it. So, we let it run in demo mode alot. We did notice the neat backgrounds. So, an enterprising student here (Chris Kane, if you must know) whips out the Perl Mach-O extraction script posted to this group not so long ago. Now, we've got alot of wonderful backgrounds around - and just lack of a program to display them (Scene isn't it, unless you enjoy running it just to set your background every time you log in). With that on my mind, I sat down and wrote Background. Of course, I didn't write it for use with BoinkOut's backgrounds - I've already got a couple of full-screen backgrounds of my own which I feel are much nicer. But, it can be used for just about anything you can get onto the NeXT, as it supports both tiff and eps file types. The point? Oh, yes, there's gotta be a point. Go download Background from cs.orst.edu or sonata.cc.purdue.edu. Source and all included. It's gross source - but hey, it works! Play with it. Complain. Use the source to add a speaker/listener interface. Gaze in awe at the icon/Info Panel. Whatever. Later, -- scott hess scott@gac.edu Independent NeXT Developer GAC Undergrad <I still speak for nobody> "Tried anarchy, once. Found it had too many constraints . . ." "I smoke the nose Lucifer . . . Banana, banana."