1 All I did to compile it was add: '|| defined(linux)' to the end of line 49
2 of xfish.c, and added: '#ifdef linux signal(SIGUSR1, toggle_secure); #else'
3 at line 1469 followed by '#endif /* LINUX */' at line 1495.
5 I didn't figure this out for myself either, I just looked at the port of
6 xfishtank1.0 at sunsite /pub/Linux/X11/demos/xfishtank.tar.Z
7 done by: Dave Black dlbb0@amdahl.com
9 I included the source and 'stripped' binary compiled with gcc2.2.2d7 and the
10 jump4.1 libs under linux-0.99 and Xfree86v1.1
12 I've been using it for months now without any problems. Much improved over
13 xfishtank1.0, there are loads of new 'way cool' fish which posess the ability
14 to swim on top of gifs!!
16 One last note, the current Makefile was generated by my Xfree86v1.1 xmkmf
17 and uses a -m486 CCOPTION, I don't know if this would cause it to not work
18 on other machines or not (the binary, if it doesn't work try changing it to
19 -m386, and recompiling) ???
21 I'm uploading it to sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/X11/Incoming
25 ********************** FUN WITH FISH *********************
27 There are lots of programs for lots of platforms to make fish swim in the
28 background of your screen. This is a modification of an old one called
29 xfish (also called Xaquarium), that I have added more features to.
31 To not confuse you (or confuse you more) I will call this modified xfish
32 "xfishtank". ['A rose by any other name...' and all that]
35 How is this different? I started with you basic xfish, and I kept the
36 bubbles (actually I re-wrote some of the bubble code, but it LOOKS the same).
37 I changed the rest of the code to allow any number of multicolored fish to
38 swim around. Each fish can have up to 255 colors, but on startup the program
39 takes all the colors from all the fish, and squeezes them down to all fit
40 into the default colormap as best it can. Any fish can be any size in
41 width and height. To make them look more like they are swimming, fish are
42 animated (Very simple 2 frame animation) [I got this idea from watching
43 the AfterDark fish on the Mac]. Fish CANNOT swim over each other, they
44 will turn around if they are about to collide. I had a version that
45 had fish swiming over each other, it was WAY to slow to be something to run
46 on your background while working, so I deleted it.
48 xfishtank -help to see the command line options.
51 ********************** NEW FUN WITH FISH *********************
53 Since the original version, I have received various comments and bug fixes.
54 This version I know runs on SGIs running 4.0, Sparcs running 4.1,
55 Decstations running 4.1, and RS6000s running 3.1. However, there were mongo
56 memory leaks in the X server distributed with the RS6000, so I had to compile
57 the X11R5 server and use that.
59 As you add more fish (especially very colorful fish) the total color use set
60 becomes quite large (greater than 255). I added 2 new options to help you
61 deal with this. By default xfishtank would find the total color use set
62 for all the fish you requested, and then start allocating out of the default
63 colormap until it filled up, it would then match the rest of the colors to
64 whatever colors it could get. This first come first serve color allocation
65 can give really bad results for large color sets. I added the -m option
66 to allow you to specify that the program should cut the color use set down
67 to the number you specify with the -m option before starting to allocate
68 out of the default colormap. The algorithm used by -m is considerably better
69 than first come first serve. Also, having xfishtank use ALL the available
70 cells in the default colormap can be bad. The -C options lets you limit how
71 many cells xfishtank will take out of the default colormap.
72 In the first come first serve senario colors are allocated for the fish,
73 in the order of appearance in the FishList file, and then from the backgound
74 picture if one exists.
76 Finally, due to popular demand, I put back in my clipmask code. By setting
77 the -d option (for Do clipping), xfishtank will swim its fish over whatever
78 you already have on your root window. WARNING: This will slow down your
79 machine! The reason I took this code out originally was it slowed my
80 machine down too much for me to comfortably work. But if you think you have
81 a really spiffy fast workstation, go ahead and give it a try.
83 If you use the -d option and notice some flicker (which I expect you will),
84 this is because xfishtank is just doing an XClearArea, and letting the root
85 redraw its background. If you know what you want your background picture to
86 be, use -p <image_file> instead of -d. The image_file needs to be a gif
87 image. Since xfishtank now knows what your background is, xfishtank with
88 the -p option should have much less flicker. However, it suffers the
89 disadvantage that you can't change the background picture without restarting
92 The intrepid explorer of the source code will notice that there are some
93 options not described in xfishtank -help. In particular -o -and -D. These
94 options aren't described because they were stuff I was fussing with and couldn't
95 get to work. I left them in on this release so that if someone else wanted
96 to try and get them to work, they could see what I had already tried. The -o
97 option lets fish try and swim on top of each other. It looks ugly no matter
98 how I do it, if you can fix it, great. -D is a special option that is only
99 active if you have also specified -d and -p. Normally you never want to specify
100 both -d and -p because it doesn't make the animation any better, and it
101 slightly messes up fish to bubble intersections. However, if you specify
102 -d -D -o -p you will get as close as I could get to proper fish intersections.
103 And when you see how crumby these are, and how slow it makes your machine
104 you will know why I gave up.
106 Ok, I'll fess up, I'm lying, I did actually get good fish to fish intersections
107 but only by writing a completely different version of xfishtank that has
108 each fish be a shaped override-redirect window, that moves itself, and changes
109 its shape-mask to animate. This looks REALLY COOL, but grinds any and all
110 X servers to a complete standstill.
113 ********************** NEW FISH PICTURES *********************
115 This release contains a grand total of 29 fish! These fish were carefully
116 created through lots of hard work, and the help of many many people who
117 sent me pictures of fish, non-copyrighted gifs of fish, and allowed me to
118 borrow their scanners. I'm not going to try and name them all here, there
119 are lots of you, and I'm afraid I may miss someone. You all know who you are,
120 and you have my heartfelt thanks, I couldn't have done this without you.
123 ********************** TROUBLE WITH FISH *********************
125 There is a scarcity of good fish pictures in the world, and they are all
126 protected by lawyers. Here is the solution I propose.
128 Any of you with talent can edit up any pictures you want, somehow get them
129 into GIF format, and import them into your xfishtank. The program
130 "giftofish" that I am supplying here takes as input any 2 GIF files,
131 and creates a xfishtank header file for that fish. The 2 files must have
132 the same width and height, and must both have the same background color.
133 The pictures are assumed to be the two frames of an animated fish swiming right.
134 Put this new header file into your fishmaps directory, edit the FishList
135 file to add the prefix of that header file, and increment the total fishcount
136 on the first line of that file. Now recompile xfishtank, and your new fish
137 will be used. Also, the program fishtogif will extract the two gifs from
138 any fish header file so you can touch up what you already have.
141 The AfterDark fish on the Mac are beautiful. If you
142 have already shelled out the money to Berkely Systems Software to buy those
143 fish, and you also want to see them on your UNIX box, here is what you do.
144 If you can transfer the Mac fish files to UNIX, run the "gofish" program
145 supplied here, it will write out the fish into two intermediate files.
146 The files will look strange, they are my own format, just feed them to the
147 giftofish program (which understands that format), and it will create a
148 fish header file for you.
149 OpenWindows 3.0 comes with some fish pictures. If you have purchased
150 Openwindows, and want to use those pictures, the program "rasttofish"
151 supplied here will read one of their sun raster fish pictures, and produce
152 a xfishtank header file for it. Note, the Openwindows fish are only one
153 frame, so the won't be animated.
154 There is apparently a PC Windows program with some swimming fish.
155 The individual fish are stored in .fsh files. The program pcfshtofish
156 will turn one of these .fsh files into an xfishtank header file.
159 ********************** THANKS *********************
161 A really big thanks to well over 100 wonderful people who after downloading
162 the last version of xfishtank took the time to send me such pleasant,
163 complimentary, and supportive e-mail. This version was never planned, but
164 all of you have made me feel better about writing this code than anything
165 that any employer has ever paid me for.
168 As usual, mail any problems, questions, complaints, reccommendations, and
projects / xfishtank.git / blob