April 12, 1995

Greetings All,

A couple of days ago I uploaded a capture of my desktop to
comp.os.os2.advocacy , comp.os.os2.misc and 
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy and since then have had tons of e-mail 
coming in. To all who responded thanks for the good words! Enclosed in
this archive are either my 256 colour bitmaps or my 65000 colour 
bitmaps and textures and hints on setting OS/2 the way I have.
Enjoy

Regards,

Peter Conteos (conteos@io.org)




Contents.

1. Included files
2. Hints on configuring OS/2
3. How to set it all up
4. The Rexx scripts
5. Word on textures and seamless tiling
6. Credits


1. The included files.

-deskcap.bmp  : Screen capture of my desktop (256 or 64k colour)
-desktop.bmp  : Bitmap to be used as background (1024x768x 256 or 64k)
-but_def1.bmp and but_def2.bmp : Textures with grey buttons
-but_list.bmp : Bitmap for list style folder
-all other bitmaps are textures
-howto.txt    :How to setup desktop and other usefull stuff(this file)
-snap.cmd and reflow.cmd : Rexx script (description in this file)

*** All bitmaps are in OS/2 bitmap format and may not work with 
Windows viewers. They all work fine with OS/2.****


2. Hints on configuring OS/2.

First of all I would like to mention my hardware setup, OS/2 software 
used and sites of interest.

Hardware:

486/66
12 MB RAM (Really would like 16)
860 Meg Hard disk
ATI XPression 2MB DRAM (Desperately want VRAM)
17' Monitor
14400 Modem
Panasonic 2x CDROM
Other bullshit

Average to low end system for todays standards but works great.

Software:

Warp ofcoarse (How do you spell this damn word, is this correct?)
PMView as graphic viewer (EXCELLENT PRODUCT!! Definate register)
JPGView for desktop capture
Two Rexx scripts I have written that allign icons to a grid in a 
    folder. (included)


Sites of interest:

For textures, there are two sites I found, one WWW and one FTP.

FTP:      avalon.vislab.navy.mil       /pub/textures/tif
WWW:      http://www.seanet.com/ProfessionalCollection/catalog.html


  There are some resource considerations when setting up your desktop 
with bitmaps all over, namely RAM. I run my desktop at 1024x768x65000k
and have constantly 18 folders open all with backround bitmaps and a 
fullscreen desktop bitmap. I have estimated all these bitmaps eat up 
about 4meg of ram so my system runs like it has only 8 megs. If I 
switch to a 256 colour resolution this I reckon should be cut to 2 meg
used. Any one with eight megs ram or less should not consider using to
many bitmaps. Also I wouldn,t recommend my kind of setup with a 
resolution less than 800x600.

I will first explain how my desktop works and then how to set it up.


The functionality of my desktop.

  It is a good idea to have an image of my desktop displaying when
reading this (deskcap.bmp ; this is slightly
different than the one I uuencoded onto the newsgroups)

  All my folders are displayed around the edges of the screen. There 
are great advantages of having all your icons in folders like this. 
For instance if I have 3 or 4 aplications running covering up most of 
my screen and folders and I want to acces my drives, I click to the 
top of the screen and my drives folder pops up. If I want to print,
fax, or shredd something I click to the bottom of my screen and all 
objects having some kind of drag and drop utility are displayed. The 
folder to the right has my main groups ie comms, games,projects, 
system setup etc and these can be accessed similarily. If icons are 
placed on the desktop one would have to minimize or move their apps so
as to get to the icon. I have only 5 icons on my desktop and they are
hidden under the drop folder because I never use them.

  I will explain in depth all my folders now.

The Right Side folder:

  This folder is my 'Main' folder. The icons in it are folder objects 
and these folders open on the Left Side. The icons are:

-System Setup
-Utilities
-Minimized Window viewer
-Communications
-Words
-Numbers
-Graphics
-Multimedia
-Games
-Information
-Program Developement
-Projects


The icon that opens the main folder is hidden under the drop folder.


The Left Side folders:

  On the left side there are 12 folders corresponding to the icons on 
the right side folder. They perfectly overlap eachother and are always
open. When an icon is selected on the right side folder the 
appropriate folder comes to the foreground instantly. It almost looks 
like it is an application as only the icons change!

The Top Folder:

  This folder contains anything drives related. All my drives and 
partitions, the OS/2 seek and scan utility and an excellent program 
for doing disk copies and other things (PMDDE21.zip ?)

The icon that opens this folder is hidden under the drop folder.

The Drop Folder:

  This is the only folder that kind of looks like a folder because the
title bar cannot be hidden off screen like the others. This pisses me 
off. However it is a very important folder and is actually three 
folders in one. On the folder you see I have from right to left:

-Shredder (duh)
-Printer (another duh)
-Fax (does not open the fax applet but faxes documents)
-PMDIFF (a utility that compares two files, uses drop)
-A folder for zipfiles, temporary long term storage (?) etc..
-A folder containing all my icons
-Text template
-Document template
-Folder template
-Program template
-The last two are special icons
    I found that I run out of space for templates and other drag and 
    drop stuff so I invented this system. These icons open similar 
    looking folders hidden right under the drop folder. These folders 
    contain either more templates or more drag and drop icons.They 
    also contain an icon to get you back to the main drop folder.
    In my 'drop2' folder I have Images,Media,A shadow of the os2/dll 
    directory, Info, Snap to grid, and Re-allign objects. The last two
    objects are included in this archive.

The icon that opens this folder is under itself (sneaky eh?)


The Clock folder:

  This folder contains all the PIM stuff included with warp.
It also contains a shadow of the clock app which is hidden under the
clock so when the folder is selected and the clock is covered up you 
can bring the clock back by clicking on its icon.

The icon that opens this folder is hidden under the drop folder.



  I think this covers my setup pretty well. An example of how I would 
start a new document (like this) follows. Click on the projects icon
(on the right side folder) drag a document template from the drop 
folder into the projects folder (on the left side) change the name of 
document with alt-left click open the document and presto.
A couple of things I should mention about the projects folder. First 
the physical location of this folder is not in the 'Main' folder (the 
right side folder) but rather on my hardrive as directory 
d:\data\projects  . The projects icon in the main folder is a shadow 
of this directory. I have done this because I do not like actual data 
and files in my c:\desktop\ structure but just folder,program and 
shadow objects. Secondly, the projects folder (as well as the 
'Minimized Window Viewer'  and the 'Information' folder) may contain 
similar looking icons, so the text of these icons distinguishes them. 
To solve this problem, these folders have a different 'look'. The 
folders are in the exact some position as the other left side folders 
but their backround bitmaps are in a list fashion and the icons are 
flowed with their text showing. (use enclosed but_list.bmp as
background tiled). 


3. How to set it all up.


  It is important to first understand the directory structure of my
layout.

Directory of c:\desktop
Main
Drop
PIM
Drives

Directory of c:\desktop\Main
System Setup
Utilties
Minimized Window Viewer
Communications
Words
Numbers
Graphics
Multimedia
Games
Information
Program Developement
Projects (shadow of d:\data\projects  )

Directory of c:\desktop\Drop
Drop2
Templates2
Icons (shadow of d:\data\icons )
ZipFiles (shadow of d:\data\zipfiles )

Directory of c:\desktop\drop\drop2
Drop (shadow of c:\desktop\drop )

Directory of c:\desktop\drop\templates2
Drop (shadow of c:\desktop\drop )
Templates (templates folder installed with OS2)



The rest of the icons in all these folders are either program objects
or regular folders (like the ones that came with OS2 ie 
Productivity,Command Prompts etc ...


 There are two different types of folders, the folders with just icons
and the folders with icons and text(look at the folder on the left 
side that says 'down' on the title).

  WARNING!!! The scheme palette should not be used in making any 
folders as there is a bug with this object. If you drag a scheme into 
a folder, every time you open the folder it will get shorter by four
pixels!! This is not good!!!

  Using templates is the easiest way to setup the folders.

How to set up an icon only folder template.

-Drag a folder from the folder template and place it on the desktop.
-Open the folders settings
-On the first page deselect 'visible'
-Select 'change font...' and set the font to size 1
-Go to the 'Background' page and drag the background you want 
 (but_def1.bmp ) for the grey button. Make sure 'tiled' is selected.
-Go to the 'General' page and change the name to something appropriate
 and select 'Template'
-Close the settings and you have a 'button bar' object.


  When you drag on of these objects you can then rename it and 
position it accordingly. You can then place other objects in this 
folder right on the grey box. I have a couple of Rexx scripts included
in this archive that will allign the icons perfectly but read the 
instructions at the end of this file for more information about this.

  If you want to set up an existing folder you must do this manually,
as above, for each folder. (If the scheme pallete worked properlly
you wouldn't have to do this, anyway)


  The other type of folder is for icons and text:

-Do the first two things as above
-On the first page select 'Flowed' and "Small Size'
-Select 'change font' and set the font to 'helv' size 8
-Go to the background page and drag 'but_list.bmp'
-Go to the General page and change the name and select 'Template'
-Close the settings and you are done.

 

  To set up the clock as mine you must use the scheme palette to get
rid of the border. Select a 'New Scheme' and change the border width 
to 1 and 1. Drag the scheme onto the clock, presto, done. You can then
change the colours of the clock to your liking by using the clocks 
settings.

  I hope this covers everything regarding setup.


4. The Rexx scripts.

  These small batch files snap.cmd and reflow.cmd help in setting up
your icons nicely. The snap.cmd file arranges icons to the nearest 
'proper' position , whereas the reflow.cmd file re-arranges the icons
from top to bottom on the specified grid.

There are several things to consider.

-In the settings for these files on the parameters line two numbers
are required. The first number is the size of your icons in pixels and
the second number is the width in pixels that you want the icons to be
spaced. On my system the icons are 40x40 and the button bitmaps are 64
pixels wide, therefore I have '40 64' on my parameters line.

-The folder that you want alligned must be closed.
-The folder name must have only one word ie 'SystemSetup' not
 'System Setup' .

  To use these routines simply drag the icon of the closed folder on 
to the cmd file and after it is done the icons in the folder are 
aligned.

  If you have any problems with these routines let me know. I am in no
way responsible for anything these routines do to your system. They 
work fine on my system.


5. Word on textures and seamless tiling.

   Many of the textures included do not tile seamlessly in
a nice way. For some textures you can accomplish a pseudo
seamless look by inverting the texture and pasting it next to
eachother. Look at wood3_2.bmp for an example.

6. Credits

Credit must be given to whomever created these textures in the first place,
since I only downloaded them from various ftp and www sites. One bitmap
in particular, the brown texture in the middle of the screen with the warp logo
I downloaded from THE SHAREWARE BBS. I superimposed
this over a granite texture for the final look. They have many more great
bitmaps there by the way.  


Well thats it!

Hope this all makes sense and good luck beautifying your WPS.

Regards,

Peter Conteos (conteos@io.org)

P.S. Post any general questions on comp.os.os2.misc so that I don't 
have to answer the same question ten times. Thanks!!





                  
                












