Setting Sun is a Mac OS screen saver, which uses plug-ins to draw interesting images when your computer is idle. Although screen savers are not strictly necessary (since most modern monitors can turn themselves off when idle), they still provide a nice distraction from a blank screen - and allow you to lock your display with a password.
Setting Sun requires QuickTime and a PowerPC based Mac, running Mac OS 8.1 or later.
Setting Sun runs as a normal Mac OS application - it does not require any Control Panels, Extensions, or Background Applications.
3D Faders
One of the main differences between Setting Sun and other Macintosh screen savers is that Setting Sun includes a wide range of 3D modules.
To run these faders, Setting Sun requires both QuickDraw 3D and OpenGL to be installed. A fast Mac, ideally with 3D hardware acceleration, is also recommended.
QuickDraw 3D and OpenGL can both be installed using Apple’s OpenGL installer, which can be downloaded from <http://www.apple.com/opengl/>. If you are using Mac OS 9.0, both QuickDraw 3D and OpenGL are already installed.
Older machines may require 3D acceleration hardware to obtain reasonable results - iMacs, iBooks, Blue/White G3s, or G4s all have 3D acceleration hardware built-in and are perfect for running Setting Sun.
Registering Setting Sun
Setting Sun costs $20. You may evaluate it free of charge for 30 days, after which you should register to purchase your copy. Registering will remove the reminder message which will start to appear after the 30 day evaluation period is over.
Payments are processed by Kagi Shareware, who provide an on-line ordering service at <http://order.kagi.com/?DG>.
Payments can also be submitted by fax, email, or post by using the supplied Register application. Full details of these payment methods are contained in the “How To Register” document.
Using Setting Sun
To use Setting Sun, double-click the application. The first time you launch it, the Preferences window will be displayed - to open this window in the future, select “Preferences” from the Edit menu.
The Preferences window forms the main user interface for Setting Sun, and contains several panels. Taking each panel in turn:
The General panel is divided into three sections: Application, Fading, and Switching.
The Application section allows you to start Setting Sun automatically at startup (and bring the Finder to the front again after Setting Sun has been launched), and to disable the Command-Q shortcut for quitting Setting Sun.
When the startup checkbox is selected, an alias to Setting Sun will be created for you in the Startup Items folder in your System folder. Deselecting this checkbox will remove this alias file.
The Fading section provides some generic control over the fader modules. The time before a module is activated can be set to the nearest minute, network/disk activity can be checked to delay fading, and you can control if faders are allowed to change the monitor depth.
You can also control if the screen saver should be stopped if the mouse moves. If you have pets that like to bump into your mouse, you may want to turn this setting off - faders will then ignore the mouse, and only stop when a key is pressed.
If you have a 3Dfx Voodoo 1 card, you can also allow Setting Sun to use that card to accelerate certain faders. Please see the “3Dfx Support” document for more details.
The Switching section allows you to select corners of the screen which, when the mouse is moved into them, will either invoke the screen saver or prevent the screen saver from ever activating.
By default, these corners are a 5x5 pixel square. Selecting “Use small corner sizes” will reduce this to a 2x2 square in each corner.
You can also select a hot key combination which, when pressed, will instantly invoke the screen saver.
Both the hotspot corner and the hot key combination can be used in any application, provided Setting Sun is running in the background. If you are running the GoMac Control Panel you may want to avoid selecting the corners at the bottom of the screen - GoMac takes control over these corners, making them unavailable to Setting Sun. As an alternative you may want to try James Thomson’s excellent <http://www.dragthing.com/>, which is fully compatible with Setting Sun!
The Faders panel allows you to select the current screen saver, and to get an instant preview of what will be displayed when the screen saver is invoked.
The right hand side of this panel is taken up by the fader’s preferences, if any (this example shows a single slider, which controls the height of the flames). Each fader has different preferences, so the contents of this area will change depending on the current fader.
This side of the panel also contains a Web link - clicking this will start up your web browser and take you to the fader’s home page.
The panel also contains three buttons. The “Fade Now” button will invoke the current fader in full-screen mode, the “Defaults” button will reset the fader’s preferences back to their default settings, and the “About” button will display the fader’s about box.
The Security panel is divided into two sections: Password Control, and Password.
The Password Control section allows you to control when the password is required: this can be used to provide some privacy for your machine when the screen saver is running, and to prevent others from attempting to turn off (or even quit) the screen saver application when the screen saver is not running.
It also allows you to set if the password dialog should pause the active fader, or if it should be allowed to continue animating in the background. If you have a slower machine you may want to turn this off to make the password dialog feel more responsive.
The Password section contains your password, and a hint that can be used to remind you of what your password was. The hint field can be cleared if you don’t need a hint.
N.B. - the password security in Setting Sun is adequate for casual users, but it will not thwart a dedicated hacker. Although more complex security schemes are possible, they tend to introduce a risk of system instability. To avoid this, Setting Sun has deliberately opted for a simpler, more stable, mechanism.
Failed login attempts will be displayed in a scrolling ticker message across the top of the screen.
The System panel is divided into two sections: Display and CPU.
The Display section allows you some additional control over the display settings. The “Allow Millions” checkbox indicates if Setting Sun should should change the display depth to Thousands of Colours if it is currently in Millions of Colours. This can be useful for 3D cards with enough VRAM to accelerate full screen rendering in Millions of Colours - selecting this checkbox will prevent a depth change, and may produce a higher quality image.
You can also control if the screen should be smoothly faded in and out when a Fader is launched.
You may also want to display a Frames-Per-Second counter, to indicate the performance of each fader (up to the maximum of 60fps). Selecting this checkbox will cause the current FPS rate (averaged over the past few seconds) to be displayed at the top left of the display (the FPS count is not displayed in the Fader preview window).
If you have multiple displays connected to your Mac, the “Select Display” button can be used to select the display that faders will run on.
The CPU section allows some additional control over Setting Sun’s CPU usage. The slider indicates the amount of CPU time that Setting Sun should consume - when the slider is at the maximum, absolutely no time will be yielded to other applications.
This may cause problems for some background applications (e.g., File Sharing), and the default setting (one increment below the maximum position) will normally provide the best performance.
If you wish to allow background applications a greater share of the CPU, reduce the value of the slider. If you have a fast 3D card, you may find that increasing the time yielded to other applications does not decrease the frame rate - in that case, you may want to adjust the slider to allow background applications more time.
Notes
• Running other CPU intensive applications at the same time as Setting Sun can cause jerky animation. If you are running the RC5 client, or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, you may find that Setting Sun is unable to maintain a consistent frame rate. To obtain the maximum frame rate, adjust the CPU Usage slider on the System panel of the Preferences window.
• If you use Setting Sun's password protection feature and would like to protect your Mac on startup, place a copy of the “Fade Now” AppleScript (found in the Fader Support folder) into the Startup Items folder of your System Folder. This AppleScript tells Setting Sun to fade immediately - protecting your Mac as soon as it starts up.
• Setting Sun is compatible with Mac OS 9, although it does not take advantage of any Mac OS 9 specific features (e.g., the Keychain, or Multiple Users). Support for these features is planned for a future version.
Version History
1.4, 7th August 2000
• Added six new faders - Atlantis, Image Cube, Flag, Plasma, RotoZoom, Slide Show.
• Added photos folder (thanks to Grace Grant, Jonathan Hogg, and Saskia Köhler).
• Added multiple monitor support - can now select which display the animation runs on.
• Fixed bug where Defaults button had no effect for Random fader.
• Fixed bug where “wake up if mouse moves” checkbox was being ignored.
• Faders can now select folders for their content.
• Reduced animation speed of some faders on user request (Explode, FlowerBox, Roller Coaster).
• The Registration window now includes a link to the Register dialog.
• The cursor is now hidden before starting a fade.
• The Roller Coaster fader no longer has a corrupt texture image.
• The Matrix fader now uses smaller characters.
• The Image Cube fader can now display a folder of images, or the current screen content.
• The Chrome fader now defaults to full screen mode.
1.3.2, 4th June 2000
• Added preference to control if network and disk activity is checked before fading.
• Now no longer use Draw Sprocket to fade displays, to work around bug in Draw Sprocket 1.7.3.
• Random fader no longer does unnecessary switch if idle delay is longer than random switch delay.
• Fixed bug where mouse movements would not count as activity if “Wake up if mouse moves” was off.
1.3.1, 2nd June 2000
• Fixed bug where application would crash when fading if the Control Strip was not installed.
1.3, 29th May 2000
• Added preference to control size of hotspot corners.
• Added preference to control if faders are allowed to run behind the password dialog.
• Added new fader - Star Spiral.
• Added “change every minute” to Random fader.
• Now allow password to contain non-alphanumeric characters.
• Now check for network and disk activity before considering the machine to be idle.
• Now ignore the Energy Saver API on Mac OS 9.0, since it was withdrawn in that release.
• Now manually restore the visibility of the Control Strip, to work around Mac OS 8.5 bug.
• Now use Quesa logo model rather than QuickDraw 3D™.
• Hotspot corners now relative to entire desktop, not just the main monitor.
• Fixed bug in Yum fader which could cause a crash.
• Fixed bug in Clouds fader which could cause a crash if QuickTime Effects was missing.
• Fixed bug in Ripple fader where preferences could fail to be saved.
• Fixed bug where images could sometimes fail to load.
• Fixed bug where a “missing symbol” error would occur on pre-Mac OS 8.5 systems.
• Fixed bug where Energy Saver API was causing instability on Mac OS 9.0.4.
• Fixed bug where the AfterDark Gestalt would be incorrect when the password dialog is visible.
• Fixed bug where the application resources could sometimes be overridden by fader resources.
• Fixed bug where the “Fade Now” button could sometimes be ignored.
• Fixed bug where the registration information could be lost, and the reminder window would re-appear.
• Fixed bug where waking a fade with a keypress could sometimes immediately re-fade.
• The 3Dfx checkbox has been renamed, since it only supports Voodoo 1 cards.
• The Typewriter fader now keeps strings in a resource, rather than hard-coding them.
• The sound effect checkbox has been removed, since it was not implemented.
• Updated documentation to rephrase CPU usage slider after user feedback.
• Mac OS 8.1 now the minimum system supported, in preparation for Carbon.
1.2, 6th October 1999
• Added Random Fader to switch faders automatically.
• Added five new faders - Collage, Dim, HAL 9000, Matrix, and Typewriter.
• Added gamma fades at the start and/or end of a fade.
• Added control over CPU usage, depth switching, and FPS display.
• Added AppleScript support - sample script in “Fader Support” folder will fade Setting Sun on launch.
• Now never fade if the menu bar is hidden or a modal dialog is active.
• Now allow automated apps (e.g., Retrospect) to launch and interrupt a Fader.
• Now allow the Desktop to redraw if a Fader requests a depth change, to allow Ripple to grab a better image.
• Now open Fader resource forks as read-only if running from a read-only volume (e.g., a CD-ROM).
• Now reset to the Blank Screen fader if the Option key is held down while opening the Prefs window.
• Now use Cmd-D as the keyboard shortcut for “Fade Now” rather than Cmd-F.
• Now compatible with Mac OS 9.
• Fixed bug where the Default button sometimes failed to function for OpenGL faders.
• Fixed bug where the “allow depth change” and “allow sounds” preferences were reversed.
• Fixed bug where the menu bar clock would not redraw correctly when password protection was enabled.
• Fixed bug where a sleep time of 0 when password protection was enabled would cause an infinite loop.
• The Ripple fader now allows control over the size of texture used.
• The Yum fader now includes a free Sith Lord.
• The Swarm fader no longer changes the display depth.
1.1, 27th June 1999
• Added 3Dfx support.
• Added workaround for memory leak in 3D drivers, which fixes some crashes and a white screen in Ripple.
• Added control over individual hotspot corners, and improved hotspot activation behaviour.
• Now compatible with Snapz Pro.
• Now weak linked against Internet Config, and will launch without it.
• Now restores previously active app if activity is detected while a fade is starting.
• Improved security by disabling Cmd-Option-Escape when a password is set.
• Improved consistency of fader frame rates on fast machines.
• Fixed bug where some monitors wouldn’t be blanked if the startup monitor was different from menu bar monitor.
• Fixed bug where would wake up after 1 hour if the Energy Saver control panel was set to “never”.
• Fixed bug where the “Wake up if mouse moved” checkbox could sometimes be ignored.
• Fixed bug in the Splines fader where the trail could collapse into a single loop.
• The Clouds fader has a new rotation preference.
• The Pulsar fader is now allowed to run in software.
• The Ripple fader is now allowed to run in software, and has preferences for wave height and colours.
