rice paper background in trunk?

Hi Eliot, you can tile any graphic as your background by opening a
File browser in Squeak, then selecting the image you want to use as
your background, then click on the "Background" button in the toolbar.
It tiles it by default.

You can dig out the bits from Squeak 4.3 "Ricepaper" if you want
those, or there are a lot more available on the net, such as at
http://subtlepatterns.com/.

HTH.

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 06-07-2016, at 2:28 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> You can dig out the bits from Squeak 4.3 "Ricepaper" if you want
> those, or there are a lot more available on the net, such as at
> http://subtlepatterns.com/.


Ooh, nice.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: HALT: No-Op

> On 06-07-2016, at 4:01 PM, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Chris, I know.  I want a programmatic way of getting it back.  It used to be party of the release builder.  How can I find that code so I don't have to grab something from the filesystem?

(Form fromFileNamed: ‘foo.png’) setAsBackground
appears to work. Looks nice with ‘natural_paper.png’.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
"Bother" said Piglet, as Pooh smeared him in honey.

Eliot Miranda-2 wrote

Hi All,

    how do I set rice paper as the background as opposed to this drab
grey?  Marcel told me once but I think I deleted the email.  I can't find
anything on lists.squeakfoundation.org.  Sorry for the noise.

_,,,^..^,,,_
best, Eliot

Hi Eliot,

if you drag-drop an image into the world, inspect it, choose the "originalForm" in that SketchMorph. On that form you do:

ReleaseBuilder setProjectBackground: originalForm.

Then, you will have it also for new Morphic projects.

Basically, you want to set the color/fill-style of the project's world (resp. paste-up morph). Hence, related interfaces include:

Project >> #setAsBackground:
Project class >> #defaultFill:
PasteUpMorph >> #fillStyle:
MorphicProject class >> #defaultFill:

If you have a form and you need a fill-style, you can either create a BitmapFillStyle with this form or create an InfiniteForm with it, which will also be accepted as fill-style.

BitmapFillStyle class >> #fromForm:
InfiniteForm class >> #with:.

In FormCanvas, BitmapFillStyles will be converted into InfiniteForm anyway. See, for example,

FormCanvas >> #fillRectangle:fillStyle:
FormCanvas >> #setFillColor:
InfiniteForm >> #displayOnPort:offsetBy:

Best,
Marcel

Eliot Miranda-2 wrote

Chris, I know.  I want a programmatic way of getting it back.  It used to
be party of the release builder.  How can I find that code so I don't have
to grab something from the filesystem?

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Chris Muller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Eliot, you can tile any graphic as your background by opening a
> File browser in Squeak, then selecting the image you want to use as
> your background, then click on the "Background" button in the toolbar.
> It tiles it by default.
>
> You can dig out the bits from Squeak 4.3 "Ricepaper" if you want
> those, or there are a lot more available on the net, such as at
> http://subtlepatterns.com/.
>
> HTH.
>
> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> >     how do I set rice paper as the background as opposed to this drab
> grey?
> > Marcel told me once but I think I deleted the email.  I can't find
> anything
> > on lists.squeakfoundation.org.  Sorry for the noise.
> >
> > _,,,^..^,,,_
> > best, Eliot
> >
> >
> >
>
>


--
_,,,^..^,,,_
best, Eliot

Hi Eliot,

here are some older backgrounds, whose bits are not in the trunk image anymore:





Best,
Marcel

Bert Freudenberg wrote

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 12:46 AM, Eliot Miranda <[hidden email]>
wrote:
>
> I *hate* the grey.
>

+1

- Bert -

Hi there.

It seems that setting up custom backgrounds seems to be too difficult. There is, obviously, no way to capture the taste of any possible user with a default background. So, we might want to provide some alternatives. Hmmm...

For a single project, you can just drag-drop any picture into Squeak, then right-click and choose "Set as background". This way seems to be useful because many of our students configured their desktops quite nicely.

You can also choose any color as you project background. Is this difficult to discover?

Anyway, there is no reason why we couldn't provide a set of three (?) alternative patterns for the default background. Maybe as simple as switching between uniform window colors and colorful windows.

Best,
Marcel

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 03:38:42AM -0700, marcel.taeumel wrote:
That sounds like a good idea. I would like to be able to change the
background pattern, but I rarely bother doing so. If I had a few choices
easily available in the image, that is something that I would be happy
to use.

Dave
 

David T. Lewis wrote

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 03:38:42AM -0700, marcel.taeumel wrote:
> Bert Freudenberg wrote
> > On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 12:46 AM, Eliot Miranda <
>
> > eliot.miranda@
>
> > >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> I *hate* the grey.
> >>
> >
> > +1
> >
> > - Bert -
>
> Hi there.
>
> It seems that setting up custom backgrounds seems to be too difficult. There
> is, obviously, no way to capture the taste of any possible user with a
> default background. So, we might want to provide some alternatives. Hmmm...
>
> For a single project, you can just drag-drop any picture into Squeak, then
> right-click and choose "Set as background". This way seems to be useful
> because many of our students configured their desktops quite nicely.
>
> You can also choose any color as you project background. Is this difficult
> to discover?
>
> Anyway, there is no reason why we couldn't provide a set of three (?)
> alternative patterns for the default background. Maybe as simple as
> switching between uniform window colors and colorful windows.
>

That sounds like a good idea. I would like to be able to change the
background pattern, but I rarely bother doing so. If I had a few choices
easily available in the image, that is something that I would be happy
to use.

Dave

Try this:

| patterns index pattern |
Installer ss
        project: 'JSON';
        install: 'JSON'.
       
patterns := Json readFrom: (WebClient httpGet: 'https://api.github.com/repos/subtlepatterns/SubtlePatterns/contents') content readStream.

index := ListChooser chooseIndexFrom: (patterns select: [:ea | (ea at: #name) endsWith: '.png'] thenCollect: [:ea | '{1} ({2} bytes)' format: {ea at: #name. ea at: #size}]) title: 'Select pattern for background'.

index > 0 ifTrue: [
        | base64Content |
        base64Content := (Json readFrom: (WebClient httpGet: ((patterns at: index) at: #'git_url')) content readStream) at: #content.
        pattern := Form fromBinaryStream: (Base64MimeConverter mimeDecodeToBytes: base64Content readStream).
        ReleaseBuilder setProjectBackground: pattern].

Best,
Marcel

Hi Marcel,


Mouse over help somewhere in the menu bar or screen background that pointed to drag and drop would be an improvement, but see below what I think is the key deficiency.

> There
> is, obviously, no way to capture the taste of any possible user with a
> default background. So, we might want to provide some alternatives. Hmmm...
>
> For a single project, you can just drag-drop any picture into Squeak, then
> right-click and choose "Set as background". This way seems to be useful
> because many of our students configured their desktops quite nicely.

The problem is that new projects do not inherit the background of the project in which they are created, being created in the system default.  So if one drags and drops something one likes this effort must be repeated did every new project.  This is a key bug.

> You can also choose any color as you project background. Is this difficult
> to discover?

Again solid colours stink.  The textured backgrounds have much more appeal.  IIRC there is also some straightforward performance work on erasing the background for dragging whole Windows when a picture has been set as background.  Setting a picture as background can scaled to fit.  IIRC every redraw, and hence on drag, this scaling is redone, instead of caching the scaled background once per project. [this may be only in a prototype scale-to-fit I hacked up of it may be in trunk, can't remember, & using my phone).
 
> Anyway, there is no reason why we couldn't provide a set of three (?)
> alternative patterns for the default background. Maybe as simple as
> switching between uniform window colors and colorful windows.

Sure, but include the 4.5 background as an option too please.  It's small, has a nice texture and is unobtrusive and not grey.  Also, make new projects default their background to that of the current, please.

And thanks for being understanding!

> Best,
> Marcel

Eliot
_,,,^..^,,,_ (phone)

We have areal mess in our assorted and various preference and look settings. Does anyone even know how many places there are where choices can be made?

The PreferencesBrowser has a *lot* of preferences in it. Lots of stuff I have no idea how to make use of or why they are there - I mean really, do we have even the faintest use for ‘thoroughSenders’ any more? Let alone ‘ThoroughSenders’, which is a separate preference in the browser that appears to link to the same message, sort of.

It also has a bunch of colour settings, split up in strange places. But no screen background setting that I can see. Nor font choosing.

We *do* have the ‘appearances’ item in the Screen menu, with a separate collection of oddness. And then other bits scattered in many other places within the poorly designed tree of menus depending from the screen menu. But not of course actual tree menus, oh no, submenus activated by ‘more…’ and so on. It’s really not very encouraging.

My suggestion(s) -
clean out the preferences
reorganise the preference groupings more helpfully
add decent look preference tools - backgrounds, fonts, sizes, etc
clean out the weird screen menu tree
convert menus to ‘proper’ hierarchical menus wherever a long menu could do with shortening or there are logical groups of items (for example the save/quit group)

It’s quite a bit of work though.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

>> Anyway, there is no reason why we couldn't provide a set of three (?)
>> alternative patterns for the default background. Maybe as simple as
>> switching between uniform window colors and colorful windows.
>>
>
> That sounds like a good idea. I would like to be able to change the
> background pattern, but I rarely bother doing so. If I had a few choices
> easily available in the image, that is something that I would be happy
> to use.

You want to introduce _another_ way for the end-user to set the background?

A way leaves the new user wondering, "why can't I set something
besides these three ugly backgrounds?"

Bloat the image with a limited selection of hard-coded graphical patterns?

I hope we don't do that.  They should be externalized.

Chris Muller-3 wrote

>> Anyway, there is no reason why we couldn't provide a set of three (?)
>> alternative patterns for the default background. Maybe as simple as
>> switching between uniform window colors and colorful windows.
>>
>
> That sounds like a good idea. I would like to be able to change the
> background pattern, but I rarely bother doing so. If I had a few choices
> easily available in the image, that is something that I would be happy
> to use.

You want to introduce _another_ way for the end-user to set the background?

A way leaves the new user wondering, "why can't I set something
besides these three ugly backgrounds?"

Bloat the image with a limited selection of hard-coded graphical patterns?

I hope we don't do that.  They should be externalized.

It is very interesting how some words can easily produce images in people's heads. :-)

No Chris, I wouldn't do it the way you are thinking about it right now. :-D I guess. ... ;-)

Best,
Marcel

Karl, Marcel, Patrick Rein, Tobias and I have been working on
something to address this.  Expect an announcement soon...

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 12:25 PM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

> On 12-07-2016, at 5:55 AM, marcel.taeumel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Chris Muller-3 wrote
{snip}
>>
>> Bloat the image with a limited selection of hard-coded graphical patterns?
>>
>> I hope we don't do that.  They should be externalized.
>
> It is very interesting how some words can easily produce images in people's
> heads. :-)

Thinking of producing images, how about some procedurally generated patterns? Not trivial ones like stripes or blocks (so 80’s) but surely some clever graphics students can make pretty swirly textures from a few lines of code, then we generate the bitmap at the size wanted, when wanted. Could even animate them for that DrWho/Blake’s 7/Star Trek feel

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
"Bother," said Pooh, reading his bank statement from Barings.