XaAES Background Picture?

[mdivancic]

Anyone have the details on the the XaAES background picture? What format does it need to be? Will it show in the Teradesk desktop? Any pioneers would be appreciated.

[joska]

It's a quirky feature. Basically you press a key-combination (Control + Alt + ; ) which takes a snapshot of the entire screen and use it as desktop background. So to get a sensible result you must display a picture in fullscreen using ImageCopy, zView or similar and then press this key combination.

XaAES saves one background per screen resolution, so if you switch to another resolution you must repeat the process.

[mdivancic]

It's a quirky feature. Basically you press a key-combination (Control + Alt + ; ) which takes a snapshot of the entire screen and use it as desktop background. So to get a sensible result you must display a picture in fullscreen using ImageCopy, zView or similar and then press this key combination.

XaAES saves one background per screen resolution, so if you switch to another resolution you must repeat the process.

Quirky! That's an understatement, but it works. Any idea what format the MFD file created is? JPEG, TIFF, something else? If I know what the format is I can edit a background image on my Mac and replace the file created by "Control + Alt + ;".

Also, where do you find Themes for XxAES?

[simonsunnyboy]

A converter to import other pictures would be a nice feature to have. One picture per resolution is probably acceptable as well.
E.q. I run XaAES on my Falcon excluseivly with 640x480x4bpp

[helmut]

It's a quirky feature. Basically you press a key-combination (Control + Alt + ; ) which takes a snapshot of the entire screen and use it as desktop background. So to get a sensible result you must display a picture in fullscreen using ImageCopy, zView or similar and then press this key combination.

XaAES saves one background per screen resolution, so if you switch to another resolution you must repeat the process.

Quirky! That's an understatement, but it works. Any idea what format the MFD file created is? JPEG, TIFF, something else? If I know what the format is I can edit a background image on my Mac and replace the file created by "Control + Alt + ;".

Also, where do you find Themes for XxAES?

It was designed to be created by a more smart app anyway, but no one did anything about it.

There should be quite some source available to display images in full-screen on an atari, the task would be to automate the display-process and save the screen (maybe even better in an arbitrary resolution) into that .mfd-file. You will need some sort of atari to do that.

Any bit-depth below 16 does not yet work perfectly, but 1 should do.

[joska]

Any idea what format the MFD file created is? JPEG, TIFF, something else?

It's no particular format. It's just a dump of the screenbuffer, that's it.

[mdivancic]

Any idea what format the MFD file created is? JPEG, TIFF, something else?

It's no particular format. It's just a dump of the screenbuffer, that's it.

Well, that's extremely user unfriendly...

[joska]

Well, that's extremely user unfriendly...

I disagree. Storing it as raw screenbuffer data means no decoding/resizing/conversion etc on startup, which means it's very quick even on a plain Falcon. Also, it supports absolutely all screenmodes the VDI can display, including all possible future ones.

I agree that it's not very easy to create and select a wallpaper, but that could be fixed by writing an application for it.

[mdivancic]

Well, that's extremely user unfriendly...

I disagree. Storing it as raw screenbuffer data means no decoding/resizing/conversion etc on startup, which means it's very quick even on a plain Falcon. Also, it supports absolutely all screenmodes the VDI can display, including all possible future ones.

I agree that it's not very easy to create and select a wallpaper, but that could be fixed by writing an application for it.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I'm a user, with all that implies. The are thousands of image programs out there, should have to invent the wheel to put a picture on the desktop. There are plenty of raw formats like IMG an TIF that could load quickly. Heck, the IMG format is used for Themes.

Don't get me wrong. I'm having a blast getting MiNT up and running on my Falcon, working through all the little issues. I really appreciate all the advice. I just got X Windows up and running today (for the most part)...

[joska]

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I'm a user, with all that implies. The are thousands of image programs out there, should have to invent the wheel to put a picture on the desktop. There are plenty of raw formats like IMG an TIF that could load quickly. Heck, the IMG format is used for Themes.

Even on my Firebee I remove the img-folder to speed up XaAES startup. Depacking and transforming IMG-files is not fast, especially not when you have a complete framebuffer to fill.

The solution is not to add lots of code to XaAES to read, decode and transform a number of file formats, but to write a separate tool that does this for the user. zView can already create a fullscreen bitmap of any image, it would be very easy to use this to create XaAES wallpapers. Once you get zView to compile and link that is...

[helmut]

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I'm a user, with all that implies. The are thousands of image programs out there, should have to invent the wheel to put a picture on the desktop. There are plenty of raw formats like IMG an TIF that could load quickly. Heck, the IMG format is used for Themes.

Even on my Firebee I remove the img-folder to speed up XaAES startup. Depacking and transforming IMG-files is not fast, especially not when you have a complete framebuffer to fill.

The solution is not to add lots of code to XaAES to read, decode and transform a number of file formats, but to write a separate tool that does this for the user. zView can already create a fullscreen bitmap of any image, it would be very easy to use this to create XaAES wallpapers. Once you get zView to compile and link that is...

Is IMG suitable for true-color at all? I admit I forgot ..

To not blow up XaAES with rarely used code is one argument, another is (my) laziness along with reliability of the feature.

If anyone wants to go and write a converter, please contact mintlist to coordinate it with XaAES.