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Putting Backgrounds On Your Sun Workstation

Mike "pixel" Moya

How many times have you passed a Sun Workstation (SW) and seen a *really* neat picture filling its background! The recent picture of Neptune taken by Voyager II on the cover of this issue of NNN is what a screen on a SW can look like. This is a really a great feature to have.

The Sun Workstation has the ability to display two types of images (that I am aware of...), bitmaps and rasterfiles. Below is a screendump from my SW screen and if you run either Suntools or X11 on your workstation, you can place this or some other picture on your background.

Under Suntools

For rasterfiles:
- The only successful method I have used to put a background on a SW under Suntools is to use the background option when launching suntools:
```
              suntools -background image.rasterfile
```
For bitmaps: There is no way that I know of...

Under X11

For rasterfiles: Generally you would use the following, but you might want to tailor the image to your screen.
```
            xbgsun -display client:0 image.rasterfile
```
Usage: xbgsun [-display dispname] [-center] [-black] file.raster
I usually use the following:
```
       xbgsun -center -black -display coral:0 file.raster
```
-center centers the image on your screen -black makes the background black outside the image (if it doesn't completely fill the screen) -display is your SW screen display
For Bitmaps: The basic command would be:
```
xsetroot -bitmap image.bitmap

     usage: xsetroot [options] where options are:
     -display    or   -d 
     -fg    or   -foreground 
     -bg    or   -background 
     -rv   or   -reverse
     -help
     -def   or   -default
     -name 
     -cursor  
```
and only one of these may be specified at a time:
```
     -solid 
     -gray   or   -grey
     -bitmap 
     -mod  
```
Everybody who uses these digitized backgrounds has their own personal place they get them and they may or may not tell you where these elusive files are located (...I'll never tell...so don't ask me). There is no "official" directory where they are kept, they are just *around*. I would suggest you see your site specialist who *might* know where they can be located at your site.
BE CAREFUL, these files are sometimes quite large...they can be a great way to eat up your quota!!

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Last modified: Wednesday, 29-Oct-97 17:08:05 EST
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