Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!zaphod!yoyodyne!liberte
From: liberte@yoyodyne.ncsa.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: The next screen saver feature?
Message-ID: <19100001@yoyodyne>
Date: 20 Sep 90 22:17:00 GMT
References: <13599@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Lines: 26
Nf-ID: #R:hydra.gatech.EDU:13599:yoyodyne:19100001:000:1217
Nf-From: yoyodyne.ncsa.uiuc.edu!liberte    Sep 20 17:17:00 1990


Screen fading, a la Lisa, could be done easily with color
table manipulation.  

I would like to be able to launch an application to run either as a
screensaver or in the background while another screensaver runs.
I know Darkness runs applications as screensavers, but it does other
things I dont like.  My background application would do time consuming
things like ray tracing or bug evolution.  Of course, the application
should be interrupted when there is other activity, at which time it
should be able to save its data away for the next idle time.

If the screensaver selected by the user cannot run due to heavy
memory requirements, an alternate (from a list) should be used instead.
Maybe AD or Pyro do this already.

I just glanced at the After Dark programmers packet (whatever it is
called - it belongs to someone else) and noticed that modules may be
written in a number of different languages.  However, it appears that
global vars are not allowed (maybe some languages support globals?),
and debugging would be difficult since there is no skeleton to run your
module within the programming environment.  Is this true?

Dan LaLiberte
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
liberte@ncsa.uiuc.edu