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.
Setting Sun requires QuickTime and a PowerPC based Mac, running System 7.5 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 has a wide range of 3D modules - including, for the first time on the Mac, the popular “Pipes” screen saver from Windows.
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/>.
Either a iMac (Rev-B or later) or a Blue/White G3 are ideally suited to running Setting Sun. Beige G3s can run most 3D faders with acceptable performance, but older machines mayy require 3D hardware acceleration to obtain reasonable results (depending on the fader).
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 three 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, and you can control if faders are allowed to change the monitor depth or play sounds.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Notes
• Setting Sun is Energy Star compliant: if your monitor turns itself off to save power, Setting Sun will automatically wake itself up to allow other applications more CPU time.
• Running other CPU intensive applications at the same time as Setting Sun can causejerky 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.
Version History
1.1, 27th June 1999
• Now compatible with Snapz Pro.
• Added 3Dfx support.
• Improved security by disabling Cmd-Option-Escape when a password is set.
• Added workaround for memory leak in 3D drivers, which fixes some crashes and a white screen in Ripple.
• Improved consistency of fader frame rates on fast machines.
• 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.
• Added control over individual hotspot corners, and improved hotspot activation behaviour.
• 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.
• 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.
• Fixed bug in the Splines fader where the trail could collapse into a single loop.
