This is a fixed version compiled under NS3.2. The main change is that I made a background work again, since I actually am sick of having 20 icons for little app-lets, if all I want to do is e.g. have a background picture displayed.
It seems that 3.x does want to see an _ICON section or something in the binary otherwise it refuses to create a connection to the window server. Thus I hacked the original background.m into BackgroundCLI.[hm], a subclass of Application.
Now a regular app make produces an application binary with all that's needed.
Of course I modified the background_main.m, and checked the ProjectBuilder option such as NOT to create a main file on saving. (If you don't do that my changes to the background_main.m will be lost)
All that needs to be done after a make is to copy ../background.app/background to e.g. /usr/local/bin
You do not need the background.app folder, this is just an artefact because I use unmodified NeXT makefiles. If someone cares, it should be possible to do some post-compile extension to the NeXT makefile that moves background and nukes background.app thereafter. Also it is probably not too difficult to combine background and Background.app into one source tree with different make targets.
But I'm lazy now that things do what I need...
Ronald Antony
rcfa@andi.org / rcfa@cubiculum.com
Background (3) Jan 22, 1993
This is a fixed version compiled under NS3.0. The previous version tended to crash in what seemed an arbitrary fashion for some users, whereas it never crashed for other users. I tracked down this bug and fixed it - it had to do with the existence of a ".background" file in one's home directory. If this file doesn't exist, the program now creates it.
It is also in the standard app-wrapper format of 3.0 now.
I have not changed or tried to re-compile the original unix "background" program or "sysbackground" program, as I do not use those. I have not tested "sysbackground" under 3.0, but "background" seems to work from my limited experience. Use those at your own risk (and the same goes for the Background program, anyway!).
Michael Giddings
giddings@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu
Background (2) Jul 20, 1991
This is an extended version of Scott Hess' simple but effective
Background Program. The program probably gained nothing in
beauty or elegance by my meddling, but it gained some new functionality.
You can load more than one image or tile to use as a background,
you can switch between them by hand or automatically with an
adjustable frequency. It is now possible to automatically resize
images to cover the whole screen instead of tiling them. Of course,
some images then don't look nice anymore. Another new feature is
that when the repeat function is used, the image files are checked for
changes, and the display is updated accordingly. This is really neat
if you want to keep the current weather map or a "live" satellite image
in your background. As an additional tool a Unix-tool background is
included that allows to set a background from the command line or a shell
script. A shell script also provided called sysbackground can be
used to generate a default background on boot time from rc.local:
file /etc/rc.local:
# Set default screen background
/usr/local/bin/sysbackground &
Like Scott Hess, I make absolutely no guarentees about Background,
especially not for putting sysbackground into your rc.local file.
This program is free but may not be sold for profit.
