Okay then. Basically this application is a desktop backdrop selector,
which makes use of the Pinboard module in RISC OS 3. It comes supplied with
it's own ready-made set of 42 backdrops, all kept in the “BackDrops”
directory in the Resources filing system.
To use;
1) Double-click on !BackDrips icon in directory viewer. (The icon is
actually the Saint Andrews Cross). After brief pause,replica icon
should then appear on icon-bar, but now fluttering in the breeze.
2) Click on this icon, and you should see a menu-window with a Wolf-Byte
logo at the top.
3) Click on one of the text icons with SELECT and the appropriate
backdrop should appear (Just like that!)
4) When you get fed up of these backdrops,select Quit fomr the main
menu. This has the effect of clearing any icons from the
pinboard,as I can't figure out how to remove the backdrop without
issuing a *Pinboard command. Even dis-assembling the pinboard module
didn't help.
Features & menu options
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯ ¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
*** Features ***
More than one backdrop can be selected at a time,by clicking ADJUST on
a backdrop icon to toggle it's state between selected and unselected,or
alternatively by dragging a box round the icons you want.To drag a box
round them,hold down SELECT and move the mouse,holding down SELECT,until the
backdrops you want are encompassed by the dotted line.Then,release SELECT
and the backdrops will be selected.If more than one is selected,one will be
chosen at random from the selected backdrops after a predetermined length
of time.
*** Opts submenu ***
On the main menu,you will find a submenu called "Opts",which contains a list
of options:
*** Opts.Time ***
The default length of time is one minute,but this may be altered
using the ‘Time’ option on the main menu. Don't try typing a value less
than 5 seconds in this,though, as it will make your desktop almost
un-useably slow (and also report an error telling you to be sensible).
*** Opts.Wind ***
If the flag animation really slows your machine down,you can turn it
off using the "Wind" option .This is useful if you like to have the
backdrops continually randomly cycled,but don't want to have your machine
going really slowly because of it.
*** Opts.Save ***
If you have a particular favourite selection of backdrops,cycled at
your favourite interval of time,then you can save all current settings
(including current selections,time and Wind option) by selecting the ‘Save’
option.Your favourite settings will then be automatocally used when you next
load up the backdrips program.
*** Opts.Default ***
To return settings to their defualt values (ie, no backdrops
selected,animation on and 60 second cycle time),select the "Default" option.
This is useful if you accidentally save an unwanted selection,and want to
return everything to the "factory defaults"
*** Options file ***
NB if the options file becomes corrupted or damaged,then the
application will not load it,and start with the defaults. To create a new
file and over-write the corrupt one,simply select the "Save" option.
*** External backdrops ***
A backdrop not held within the application may be loaded by dragging it
down to the iconbar icon.
*****************
The main advantage of this application is that you don't have to be
bothered dragging your file to the backdrop, clicking menu on it,selecting
the Make backdrop ⇨ Tiled, and then remove the icon from the backdrop again.
Also,you don't even have to be bothered to design any backdrops!
The Backdrops are varied, mostly Okay quality, and quite nice (Bull!).
I, the author,supply no warranty,implied or expressed,of the
suitability of this piece of software to any purpose, and no responsibility
will be accepted for loss of data through the use of this application. I
also accept no responsibility for the following;
1) The Icon-bar animation causing your machine to slow down (in which
case,turn the animation off by selecting the ‘Wind’ menu option).
2) The application causing any other application to crash.
3) Offence caused to any user by the flag used,the style in which the
documentation is written in,or the fact that the back-drops are mostly mode
12 and don't look good on your nice £600+ Multi-sync monitor.
4) Anything else which is not related to me in any way.
If you want to contact me to send me any :
fan-mail, comments, bug-reports (What,bugs in my software?), suggestions
(Dear Mr McEwan, Why don't you just shove your A3000 up your Private Domain
and forget the Software.your's ,Angry from Essex), Hardware/Software
vouchers, Magazine subscriptions, Software wich you'd really like me to have
seeing as I'm such a nice guy and no-one ever talks to me or does anything
nice for me, material possesions, communicative pieces of paper, bribes,
tapes of The Beatles, your video-library of Drop the Dead Donkey and
Blossom, signed photographs of Jenna Von Oÿ, requests for me to hack games
for you (using AjC of Doggy-soft's Hacker), educational qualifications,
Birthday presents, Christmas presents,Signed photographs of Jenna Von Oÿ,
money, thoughts, ideas, or if you just want to say “hi”,then write to;
Colin McEwan
11 Helen Way
Bonhill
DunBartonshire
Scotland
G83 9PJ
N.B. If you want to send me something magnetic (e.g. a floppy disc),then
make sure it isn't F format,cos I've only got an 800k disc-drive in my
A3000,even thought I've got RISC OS 3.10...
By the way, My birthday is the 21st of October,and has been since 1977
(When I was born).
This application may be freely copied,so long as the following
conditions are met;
1) All files,including this, must be copied along with it.
2) No part of the application may be “Borrowed” or “ripped”.
3) No profit of more than £1.50 may be made by copying and selling this.
If you have any backdrops (Of the tiling variety) which you would like to
see in future versions of !BackDrips,please send them to me.All backdrops
which I include will be attributed to the originator.
At the moment,backdrops which weren't mine were from:
A-Ball -The icon from the !Beastie demo,by ArcAngel's Swiss Section.
Boom! -From some desktop demo featuring a train,by someone I can't
remember.The same people responsible for Kangakoe and that
cat that follows your pointer about.
Disc -The Arthur desktop disc-drive icon.Yuch.
Error -From Risc-OS.By Acorn.
Gods1,2 -ripped from the game GODS,with the Hacker from DoggySoft
HeadPic -File icon for some sort of graphics file.Taken from
!Transltr
RGB -Another file icon from !Translatr
DoggySoft -The DoggySoft logo.Don't which of them did it.Jp,probably.
Donut -Taken from the !Jelly demo by Hex.Probably taken,in turn,
from Top Banana.I've never seen TopBanana,but Hex's stuff
must be good,judging from the qualtiy of the !Jelly demo,and
also the excellent music.
MoreMetal -A revision of one of the backdrops from Fireball II.In mode
9 to save memory.
Thanks to all thoses who drew/painted/whatever the above
backdrops.
By the by-way,if you're having difficulties in trying to get this to work
with a RISC OS 2 computer,then good luck to you,and I hope the medication
takes effect soon...
Version History...
1.00 - Original release version.Had tall,black menu window,no options
or 3D borders.All it did was load a backdrop if you clicked
it's icon.Oh,also had old style About the Author box.
1.01 - Added multi-selection of backdrops,and Blossom mention in Info
box.(Thanks to AjC for the cycling idea)
1.02 - Got rid of Blossom mention (takes too much disc space).Added
little pointy finger pointer.
1.03 - Discovered RISC OS 3 had built in 3D window borders,so gave
Info box and menu some.Didn't like the Menu,so completely
re-designed it,using the system font to speed up
redraw,3D-borders,and made the pointer change into finger over
ALL menu icons.Suddenly remembered that I'd forgot toFont_Lose
Font the outline fonts I'd used in the Info and About windows.
So I did it now.Also split !Sprites file in two parts
- !Sprites and Sprites - to quicken viewing of the directory
viewer.Added support for !Help,and finally re-designed the
About the Author box. Whew!
1.04 - Added option to turn off flag animation,as the Wimp has a hard
enough time trying to keep up with me at the best of times.
Also added option to set cycle period and to save selections,
time and windiness,not to mention that the menu now stays on
screen if you click ADJUST.
1.05 - Recieved Standard Grade results,and was so pleased with all
credit grades that I finally realised something which has been
staring me in the face for some time - RISC OS 3.00 does not
have the built in 3D icon borders that my version (3.10) has.
This and the fact that AjC threatened to send round Jon
Ribbens to beat me up convinced me to use WimpExt to do the 3D
borders and stuff.Jolly clever module.Required some pretty
extensive template surgery,during the process of which I
forgot to make the pointer change over the Menu window
icons,and I AM NOT GOING TO DO IT AGAIN! So there. Completely
redesigned the info box (changed it to a far more sensible
looking one!),and tidied up a couple of bits of code.
Also,WimpExt doesn't seem to want to change my pointer over
menus and icon-bar icons,so these will be limited to RISC OS
3.10 and over machines.Made it so that dragging a spritefile
to the iconbar will *BackDrop -Tile it.Fixed PROCload so that
It didn't actually need the options file to be present.Useful
if file is corrupted or deleted.Also changed options file-type
to &004 and re-named the file 'Options'. Much more sensible.
1.06 -Added daft little icons to menu,and animated flag to info box
again (one of the features I liked about the original
version).Re-structured menu so options (Wind,Time,Save) are in
a seperate sub-menu.Added caret-type pointer over time submenu.
Default option was also added,as I liked the sprite. Re-wrote
the module header to include some extra help on BackDrips,and
also on TekkieBits.Added option of making multiple selections
with a DragBox.Got confused and did all the co-ordinates
negative! After a bit of algebra and lots of scribblings,
finally realised I was thinking backwards! (Idiot...).
Dated (16 Aug 1993)
1.07 -Yet more mucking about with window co-ords. This time to
implement nice,texturey backdrop in the windows. Very nice
looking. This may be implemented in future versions of WimpExt
which I haven't seen yet,so I'm not wasting time waiting to
find out. Probably will be implemented, as Andrew was making
noises to the effect of windows look nice with textures, and
will probably have said as much to Jon. Added no less than SIX
new backdrops (Stone, Stone2, Blu2, MintChocol, Waves and
Spotty).Later decided that the textured texture wasn't silly
enough for the menu window, so changed it to the !Rain sprite.
Very silly, and actually quite nice looking. Just to clarify a
minor point (outlined below), I HATE APPLE MACINTOSHS.There.
That's better. Hmm. The texture plotting routine doesn't seem
to work properly - there's a small error in sprite
positioning, and I can't figure out where it's coming from.
I'll have to have a closer look sometime. But not today.
Dated (14 Sep 1993). It can't be that long since I updated the
program can it? (since 16 Aug)
1.08 -Aha. Don't you just hate these window co-ords? Ah well. I've
just got meself a nice set of RO3 PRMs,and besides which,I've
got this window co-ord stuff licked (sorted the texturey
overlapping!).Then did a nice Backdrips logo and altered the
Info window (what a wonderful combination of softwarings!
Imagery + outline fonts for basic logo+graduated fills, and
then !Change FSI for reduction & anti-aliasing). In the last
version, I forgot to change the verions number and date in the
Info box, so all those who think they have v1.06, check it to
see, it may be v.107 (not that it's important). Also put
Texturiser sprite from mode 12 to mode 0 to save a bit of
memory.And deleted the Private file to save disc space.
Big bah Humbug to Bernie McGinlay for several reasons:
1) He is my Computing Studies teacher.
2) He won't let me reverse compatability test my other
stuff (the supposedly RO2 compatable proggies) on the schools bum of
the range A310s (1Mb,RO2 and MEMC1).
3) We're supposed to be doing Higher Computing studies
- the "Two-term Dash", and what are we doing? GENERAL PURPOSE
PACKAGES???!!! ON APPLE MACS???! Ah well, at the moment we ARE doing
some nice textbook work on systems (involving converting between
decimal,binary and hex and explaining in full Two's complement. Far
too easy, but at least relevant).Dated 30 Sep 1993
*** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File *** End of !Help File
P.S. PLEASE write to me,someone.I'm so bored.I've run out of ideas
and thingsies.I need some more. I also need to communicate with people out
there.Other,like-minded, Acorn users,whose instant thought on the mention of
'Archimedes' is not "Oh, those crappy things",because their only experience
of them is with a set of ten old A310s in VERY bad repair (Practically
falling apart),and without a single upgrade (Still 1Mb RAM,MEMC 1 and RISC
OS 2).I mention these ten in particular because these are the ones to be
found in computing room N18 in the Vale of Leven Academy.I wish they'd get
them repaired,or even better,some A5000s.Even some A3010s or A3020s would
be better.List of faults include:
Caps lock key not working (1 of)
Hard disc completely corrupt (1 of)
Floppy drive not exactly excellent (4 of)
Crappy rubber-sprung keyboards (10 of)
Horrible old-style mice (8 of)
Menu buttons of said mice jammed down (2 of)
Never mind,at least I've got my A3000...
Oh yeah,and absoultely no thanks at all to B. McGinlay (Computing
teacher) for not letting me backwards compatibility test various proggies of
mine on the above-mentioned crapoid old machines.
Note to whichever department of whatever it is that keeps buying our
school Apple-MacIntoshes. STOP IT !!!!!! WHY ARE YOU BUYING THOSE??!! IT'S A
WASTE OF MONEY! THE "INDUSTRY STANDARD" ARGUMENT ONLY STANDS UP IF YOU'VE
GOT TO TRANSFER FILES BETWEEN OTHER COMPUTERS OF THE SAME. IN WHICH CASE,
BUY US MORE ARCS. WE CAN ONLY PROGRAM ON ARC AND BEEBS. APPLE MAC SOFTWARE
IS TOO EXPENSIVE. WE CAN ONLY USE THESE MACS FOR PISSING ABOUT ON. TALKING
OF THE "INDUSTRY STANDARD" ARGUMENT, HAVE YOU ANY IDEA HOW DIFFICULT IT IS
FOR US TO TRY AND TRANSFER WORK FROM ARC TO MAC FOR PRINING? here are some
suggestions.
Don't buy any more Macs. They're no use to us. The only good thing
about them is the nice expensive printers you buy for them. So:
Don't buy a V.expensive Apple printer, and an apple to drive it, buy
us a nice,cheap Direct-Drive laser which we can use with the Archies. This
way, we could get faster, cheaper, better printing.
And what's the point of buying a computing department (a place where
people are taught about computers) AppleMacs - computers which are very
deliberatley made to be as little like computers as possible? We are
supposed to be taught programing, systems apsects, and all that stuff. How
can we do that on a mac? They're impossible to program (without some very
expensive software and hardware), and the systems aspects of the machine are
DESIGNED to be TRANSPARENT to the user,for Christ's sake. So:
Don't buy any more MacIntoshes. They are useless to us. We'd be
better off with a soldering iron. Buy us nice Acorns (A3020s,A4000s,or even
A5000s),which we CAN program,and we CAN see what is going on with the
system.
Please send me letters of protestation so I can pass them on.
Byebye,Byebye,Byebye.
v1.08 Addendum (bum fluff)
Ahhh..... Well, I've just went up to the Computer Depot on Saturday
(it's actually Thursday today) to collect my
*** RISC OS 3 Programmers Reference Manuals ***
Well wicked. But I love going to the Computer Depot anyway. I like
to drool over the A5000s (not literally!), check out the latest releases,
and share my thoughts on Apple Macs and PCs with Mark and Gary. Talking of
software, I've just got my copy of the November issue of BAU, and it's still
only September! I thought they were supposed to release the mag on the
second thursday of every month. Usually that means getting it on the second
Friday. I GOT my mag on the LAST Friday of the previous month! Silly
peoples.
But some major new software releases this month (and it is coming up
for my birthday!).
Psycho Squadron doesn't look all it's cracked up to be (sorry guys!
I'm waiting 'till you get Free-Run out!),
Lemmings 2 looks absolutely fabulous(which is on tonight),
Stunt Racer is nice looking, and this
Warlocks thingie (ad on page 68) from Network 23 whoever they are
looks splendiferous. Nevertheless, I'm waiting to see the reviews.
Can't wait to see Simon the Sorcerer. The graphics look a bit
druddie though. I know they have to be compressed (and how!), but they could
have dome better. Much. Ah well, I'm off to play the demo version of Quark
for a bit again. I might get that. It's great fun ,and if you grab all the
power-ups early on and don't get killed, it's awesome. Cheerio,
