timil.com/riscos/desktop_photo
Desktop Photo Desktop Photo

Desktop Photo

Display a picture on the pinboard

This page up to date on: 29 Mar 2024

An HD screen showing a Desktop Photo
An HD screen showing a Desktop Photo
The thrush photo is made of six adjacent giant application sprites. It is not an image in a window or part of the background

This collection of application folders I have called Desktop Photo exists only to answer a question which I paraphrase:
If you give an application a same-named sprite in its !Sprites file, it is displayed on the pinboard. How easy is it to have several application folders with oversized sprites and line them up on the pinboard to make it look as though one photograph is displayed there? Then, can we have a mechanism to switch the image to something else?
It is the beginnings of a picture-frame on the dektop separate from the Pinboard background, but not in a window.

Here's how it works:Works with RISC OS 3.n, and < 5.2n. 4.n and 6.n unknown

  1. Download thrush/zip (598KB)
  2. Drag the contents from the .zip to a convenient location on your non-volatile memory (if you want the Pinboard to be able to easily remember the 'picture')
  3. Open the directory called 'apps with oversize !Sprites' and select all the objects (Menu > Select all)
  4. Drag the six applications called “!”, “! ”, “! ”, etc., to the pinboard and then move them around until the images line up seamlessly. You may need to play around with the Grid (Menu > Configure… > Arrange pinned objects on a grid) to get that right.
  5. Save the Pinboard (see 2 above). WARNING: You must have saved the Pinboard to switch the image as that re-runs the Pinboard. WARNING Save it anyway!

Switching the image:Works with RISC OS 3.n, and < 5.2n. 4.n and 6.n unknown

  1. Download Jackdaw/zip (1.1MB) (N.B. This is useless unless the 'apps with oversize !Sprites' above have been placed on a saved Pinboard)
  2. Drag the contents from the .zip to a convenient location and not in a compressed form (if you want the switch-over to be as quick as possible)
  3. WARNING! Make sure your Pinboard has been saved or changes will be discarded!
  4. Run the application !Jackdaw. The Iconsprites in memory allotted to the !! ! ! application folders will be changed and the Pinboard re-run to make it display the new sprites.
  5. To switch back to the Thrush, run the application !Thrush. It is functionally identical to !Jackdaw and an examination of both should reveal that it's easy to create your own.

To create a Desktop Photo of your own

  1. Clone either !Jackdaw or !Thrush and change the name
  2. Change the same-named spritefile within accordingly and the application sprite in the !Sprites file: use a miniature of your photo 34 pixels high.
  3. Process a copy of your photo and make it into six strips 304 pixels tall and 96 pixels wide, except the one on the right, which can be <=96.
  4. The sprite names withing the file need to be “!”, “! ”, “! ”, etc., that is to say:
    <Pling>
    <Pling><Space>
    <Pling><Space><Space>
    <Pling><Space><Space><Space>
    ... and so on. Make any obvious edits to the !Run file too!
    To make it easier to preserve the spritenames, create a separate spritefile of your own strips with different sprite names such as a, b, c, d, e, f perhaps. With different names in your own file and the file loaded into !Paint, you can paint them into the old !! !  !   sprites with a 1:1 brush with Shape unticked.

Have fun. I am happy to host any Desktop Photo apps that you create; you can use the Write button below to send them.

Did I mention you need to save the Pinboard in order to change the picture?

An HD screen showing a Desktop Photo
An HD screen showing a Desktop Photo

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