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Screen Savers

Welcome to the illumineX free screen saver collection!  This edition of the collection includes ten screen saver modules for Mac OS X:  BabelBloX, FireWorks, Planets, Qix, Qix Triangle, Spheres, Spline, Tangent Circles, Wandering Polygon, and Warp.

You are welcome to use all screen savers free of charge and share them with your friends.  Please include this document with any screen savers you share, though, so that your friends will be aware of the release notes and license terms of the screen savers.

Feel free to tell us what you think of these screen savers and/or make suggestions for future releases.  We hope you enjoy using these screen savers as much as we enjoyed creating them for you!

illumineX screen saver team,
screensavers@illumineX.com
http://illumineX.com/

Installation and Use

Installation and use of screen savers is very simple on Mac OS X:

1.  Create a folder called "Screen Savers" in your personal Library folder.

2.  Drag the screen savers into this new folder.

3.  Start up the "System Preferences" program and choose the "Screen Saver" section.  The illumineX screen savers should appear in the list of modules.  Select one that looks interesting to you.

4.  Click the "Configure" button to change the screen saver's behavior or the "Test" button to see what it will look like when running.  Each screen saver's configuration panel has a button labelled "Info" that will give a full explanation of the configuration parameters.

That's all there is to it!

Release Notes

This release contains several added work arounds to keep our screensavers from triggering bugs in other applications:

System Preferences has a bug which could fill your console message file and eventually crash your computer.  If you hide the application while a screensaver thumbnail is running (ie, the screensavers panel is active), then a series of messages will be dumped to the console each time an animation frame tries to display.  Since this happens often, it can cause the console message file to grow rapidly.  This could eventually entirely fill your hard drive, leading to an operating system crash when the computer runs out of disk space.

The illumineX screen savers now detect this situation and will abort the attempt to draw, thereby preventing the console messages.  Non-illumineX screen savers (including Apple's "Aqua Icons" screen saver) may not contain this workaround.  As such, we recommend that you avoid hiding System Preferences with the screen saver settings visible until Apple fixes this bug.  However, if you use the illumineX savers exclusively, this will not be a problem for you.  Apple is aware of this bug and it should be fixed in a future release of Mac OS X.

The third party program SaverLab has a slightly different drawing environment than does System Preferences or the screen saver driver program used by Mac OS X.  Because of this difference, some of the illumineX screen savers didn't display properly.  (For you programmers out, there, the savers that use retained windows were the ones with this problem.)  We have added a workaround so that the savers will display fine in all environments known to us.  They now display properly when used in SaverLab.

In this release we have also improved the availability of version information and corrected a few random typos and other minor visual flaws.

There are a few minor problems remaining with the current screen savers that you will want to know about.

The "Network" control panel in System Preferences and the illumineX screen savers don't like each other very much.  If you configure one of the savers and wish to then use the Network control panel, you should first quit and restart System Preferences.  Likewise, if you used the Network options and now want configure an illumineX screen saver, you must first quit and restart System Preferences.  (Because one of the classes in the Network options conflicts with a class in one of the frameworks used by all the illumineX screen savers, you can't load both panel during a particular run of the application.)  We will have a work around for this in a future version of the savers; there wasn't time to include it in this release.

Users with two or more monitors may find that some of the screen saver modules may leave artifacts on the secondary monitors.  As a result, we recommend that these savers not be used on multi-monitor systems if you experience this problem:  Planets, Qix Triangle, Qix, Spline, and Warp.  FireWorks also may leave artifacts, but unlike the listed savers it does periodically clear the screen so there is no burn in danger if you use it.

Source code is not currently included with this distribution of the illumineX screen savers.  However, we may release some source code in the future.

License

In this license, illumineX is illumineX, inc., 202 South Third St. West, Suite #1, Missoula, MT 59801, USA, 1-877-601-7543.  The screen savers include the following screen saver modules:  BabelBloX, Qix, Qix Triangle, Spline, Wandering Polygon, Tangent Circles, Warp, Planets, FireWorks, and Spheres.

Permission to copy the screen savers, to redistribute them, and to use them for any purpose is granted, subject to the following restrictions and understandings:

1. Any copy made of the screen savers or modified versions of the screen savers must include verbatim copies of this copyright and license notice.

2. Written permission must be obtained from illumineX for:

	1. any large-scale distribution of the screen savers (For example, on CD-ROM or from a web or ftp site, etc.).

	2. distributing a modified version of the screen savers.

3. illumineX may make changes to this license at any time.

illumineX makes no express or implied warranty or representation of any kind with respect to the screen savers, including any warranty that the screen savers are defect-free. ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS HEREBY DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT WILL THE AFOREMENTIONED PARTY BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SCREEN SAVERS. The party is under no obligation to provide any services, by way of maintenance, update, or otherwise.

The screen savers and this document are Copyright (C) 2001 illumineX, inc.