m@jacobi.biology.yale.edu (mark mccallum) (10/06/90)
In the glossary it lists the base window and the workspace window. how if at all do they differ? Which one does Scene use? How can I duplicate what Scene does? I have looked at the example applications in the archives that create a big window, change it's position in the display list, etc., but I would like to duplicate Scene's ability to leave the background window in a desired state after the app terminates. Any help would be appreciated, I will post summary if there is enough interest. mark
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (10/09/90)
Well, I was working on a more-or-less definitive answer to this and in the process of coding a program to set the background image (i.e. a much improved replacement for Lane's shell script posted here in March), came up with an amusing derivative... and don't want to, um, compromise your enjoyment by releasing source just yet. Basically, when the Window Server starts, there is only one window in the screen list: a screen-sized nonretained window painted gray (with the same exposure color). Scene installs a *retained* window above that to hold background images, and twiddles things so the Workspace Manager uses that as its "placemat." (to be continued) I've FTPed the following to the submissions directory at cs.orst.edu: -rwxr-xr-x 1 eps 16384 Oct 8 19:53 narcissus* sum 07460 16 This is a binary executable. narcissus deals with one of my earliest criticisms about the Workspace: if you happen upon a logged-in NeXT you can't see who's logged in. Now you can. :-) If your picture's not in /LocalLibrary/Images/People, you will find narcissus very dull indeed. Refer to the documentation on the NeXT Mail Application for more information on this. What else? The program is reasonably well-behaved, but only known to work on 1.0 and 1.0a systems, and probably will choke and die on color images. (Not having any color systems to test this on...) There are some circumstances under which it won't work correctly, but it shouldn't do anything harmful. Enough spoilers... go play! -=EPS=-
wjs@milton.u.washington.edu (William Jon Shipley) (10/22/90)
EPS' description of how Scene works meshes with my knowledge, but he didn't mention that Scene actually redefines the PostScript variable "workspaceWindow" to be the number of its new window when it replaces the background. Assumedly, if you reset your background to a constant color, Scene nukes the new window and resets workspaceWindow back to 14 (the 1.0 initial value of workspaceWindow). -w
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (10/23/90)
In article <9692@milton.u.washington.edu> wjs@milton.u.washington.edu (William Jon Shipley) writes: >EPS' description of how Scene works meshes with my knowledge, but he didn't >mention that Scene actually redefines the PostScript variable "workspaceWindow" >to be the number of its new window when it replaces the background. It does more than that. deskWin is redefined so the right mouse button will work, workspaceWindow is for the left mouse button and the keyboard. >Assumedly, if you reset your background to a constant color, Scene nukes the >new window and resets workspaceWindow back to 14 (the 1.0 initial value of >workspaceWindow). Wrong. It does a <whatever> setgray clippath fill on the window it created, which is never freed. BTW, the consensus was that I should hold explanation until I have a complete posting prepared. -=EPS=- -- Of course it's taking a long time... it's a BACKGROUND task. :-)