Date: 20 Mar 92 20:29:31 GMT
From: ebina@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Eric Bina)
Organization: Nat'l Center for Supercomputing Applications
Subject: xfishtank (a modified xfish)
Message-Id: <1992Mar20.202931.20317@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Sender: xpert-request@expo.lcs.mit.edu
To: xpert@expo.lcs.mit.edu


xfishtank is a modifed version of xfish that lets you have many different
colored and animated fish swiming around on your background.  It is
available on export.lcs.mit.edu as contrib/xfishtank.tar.Z

	Eric Bina
	ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu


       ********************** FUN WITH FISH *********************

There are lots of programs for lots of platforms to make fish swim in the
background of your screen.  This is a modification of an old one called
xfish (also called Xaquarium), that I have added more features to.

To not confuse you (or confuse you more) I will call this modified xfish
"xfishtank". ['A rose by any other name...' and all that]


How is this different?  I started with you basic xfish, and I kept the
bubbles (actually I re-wrote some of the bubble code, but it LOOKS the same).
I changed the rest of the code to allow any number of multicolored fish to
swim around.  Each fish can have up to 255 colors, but on startup the program
takes all the colors from all the fish, and squeezes them down to all fit
into the default colormap as best it can.  Ant fish can be any size in
width and height.  To make them look more like they are swimming, fish are
animated (Very simple 2 frame animation) [I got this idea from watching
the AfterDark fish on the Mac].  Fish CANNOT swim over each other, they
will turn around if they are about to collide.  I had a version that
had fish swiming over each other, it was WAY to slow to be something to run
on your background while working, so I deleted it.

All the command line options are the same as the old xfish, type xfishtank -help
to see them.


       ********************** TROUBLE WITH FISH *********************

You will no doubt notice that this program is distributed with only a three
dumb looking fish.  This is because there is a scarcity of good fish pictures
in the world, and they are all protected by lawyers.  Here is the solution
I propose.

Any of you with talent can edit up any pictures you want, somehow get them
into GIF format, and import them into your xfishtank.  The program
"giftofish" that I am supplying here takes as input any 2 GIF files,
and creates a xfishtank header file for that fish.  The 2 files must have
the same width and height, and must both have the same background color.
The pictures are assumed to be the two frames of an animated fish swiming right.
Put this new header file into your fishmaps directory, edit the FishList
file to add the prefix of that header file, and increment the total fishcount
on the first line of that file.  Now recompile xfishtank, and your new fish
will be used.

Other fish sources:
	The AfterDark fish on the Mac are beautiful.  If you
have already shelled out the money to Berkely Systems Software to buy those
fish, and you also want to see them on your UNIX box, here is what you do.
If you can transfer the Mac fish files to UNIX, run the "gofish" program 
supplied here, it will write out the fish into two intermediate files.
The files will look strange, they are my own format, just feed them to the
giftofish program (which understands that format), and it will create a
fish header file for you.
	OpenWindows 3.0 comes with some fish pictures.  If you have purchased
Openwindows, and want to use those pictures, the program "rasttofish" 
supplied here will read one of their sun raster fish pictures, and produce
a xfishtank header file for it.  Note, the Openwindows fish are only one
frame, so the won't be animated.


As usual, mail any problems, questions, complaints, reccommendations, and
cookies to me.

Eric Bina
508 E. Michigan, #35
Urbana, IL 61801

ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu

(217)344-9101
Work(217)244-6133