Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!garnett From: garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: icon burn-in Keywords: icon burn dim Message-ID: <1130@nada.cs.utexas.edu> Date: 24 Feb 91 20:39:44 GMT Organization: University of Texas at Austin Lines: 50 This note is in reference to the one I posted yesterday on the same subject (unfortunately, I had already read my previous note and so couldn't reply to it -- but that would have been bad form anyway, right :-)? Anyway, I've received more requests for the screen dimmer, black window program than I expected. I have ftp'd it to the /pub/next/submissions directory under the name "dimBlack.tar.Z". I also sent it to the sonata archive-server via email. Does anyone know how to put something in the sonata pub/next/submissions directory? I keep getting permissions denied. I will also try to put a 2.0 binary version up for those that don't have the extended release. [suggestion for NeXT Computer, Inc. at the bottom] One more thing... I should make clear here (since I apparently didn't before) that this program (dimBlack) in its current form is really only useful for those people who have cubes in offices, at home, or in other places where they commonly stay logged in all the time. It wouldn't be much use on public cubes, since it doesn't dim the screen when no one is logged in. However, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to modify the program to make it runnable from cron. The way this would work is that cron would run a check every 30 minutes or so to see if anyone is logged into the console (using grep on ps output or some more sophisticated method). Actually, Jeff Kight once posted a program using this technique. However, his program dimmed the screen but didn't put up a black window... this allowed the user to recover by hitting the screen brightening key (which is nice). Unfortunately, if one also puts up a black window in addition to dimming the screen, the recovery method isn't a function of the user alone. The program run from cron would have to stay alive and periodically check to see if someone was wanting to use the machine (every few seconds or so) - hence my question on how to detect the current location of the mouse. This whole technique would really be a hack... [suggestion to NeXT] What would be really nice is if NeXT would add some type of screendimmerOn hook to the Windowserver program analagous to the LoginHook and LogoutHook on the loginwindow. This hook would allow the user to install his own screendimmer to be run by the Windowserver whenever it would normally autodim the screen (to the 1/4 brightness level). The screendimmerOff hook would be for the user program that restored the screen to its original state. -- John Garnett University of Texas at Austin garnett@cs.utexas.edu Department of Computer Science Austin, Texas Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com