Naturally patterns created by Desk Pattern may be used and distributed freely (including ones I myself distribute), but I would request that those who use them send me a complete copy of any application, project, disk, CD-ROM, or other media that they are placed on, be they commercial, private, or public domain. Desk Pattern itself may be distributed freely, though I retain my copyrights and prohibit modifications of Desk Pattern except for exclusively personal use.
Desk Pattern was written entirely in THINK Pascal™ v3.0. Resources and pictures were created using DeskPaint™ and ResEdit v2.1. Patterns were created using DeskPaint™, ResEdit (8 bit and less), and, of course, Desk Pattern (16 and 32 bit). I am making the source code available in the pseudo-public domain (there are some conditions on its use), so look for it.
There is not too much to tell about Desk Pattern on a technical basis. Basically it does the following: it calls SetDeskCPat repeatedly to change the desktop pattern; it BitOr's a $0080 with the misc field of parameter RAM memory to force colour desktop pattern use; it deletes and writes to ppat ID=16 in the System file; it creates 16 and 32 bit patterns of both dithering and non-dithering varieties (types 3 and 1 respectively) from pasted PICTs, and adds them to a file called Desk Patterns in the System folder (or wherever Desk Pattern is). Patterns larger than 32x32 are not supported as the operating system cannot handle them properly.
One final plea — if anyone is able to create, or comes into possession of a PICT file or resource containing 32 bit patterns that will actually draw properly, please send it to me. I have not been able to create such a beast — even PICTs created with OpenPicture…ClosePicture won't draw properly (for me at least). My name and address are Brian Lowry, 30 Renwick Heights Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850, and will continue to be until mid-1992.
