Workbench screen question.

[Thorham]

Does anyone know if it's possible to obtain the bitplane addresses for the workbench screen in 3.0 in a clean way, so I can put my own image there? Also, will this even work properly?

I'm sick and tired of not having a backdrop (wanna use a ham8 pic) and the backdrop prefs (iprefs?) keeps screwing up the colour remapping (remapping when it's not needed, for example, with a 64 color test picture that has exactly the same colors as the wb screen).

Any help is apreciated

[meega]

Isn't there a tooltype NOREMAP for this sort of thing? Or is that just to stop old icons getting their colours swapped about?

Either that or render your image to something more suitable first, say a 64 colour IFF bitmap using ImageFX. (Don't regard me as any sort of authority though.)

[alphonsus]

If your colour pens on the image aren't in the same order Workbench has allocated them, you will get this problem, though I believe it only extends as far as pen21 or so (for pointer colours),

Can you actually get a HAM mode for Workbench? I read that even if you twaeked the screenmodes you get an AGA screenmode regardless, because Workbench doesn't understand HAM.

[thor]

You could get the bitplane addresses from WB screen like this:

	move.l	intuitionbase,a6
	lea	wbname(pc),a0
	jsr	_LVOLockPubScreen(a6)
	move.l	d0,a0
	beq	error
	move.l	sc_RastPort+rp_BitMap(a0),a0

wbname	dc.b	"Workbench",0

You have then 8 bitplane pointers from bm_Planes(a0) to bm_Planes+28(a0). Should work (don't blame me if not, it's late ), but I haven't tested it. But I somewhat doubt it will help you with getting the HAM8 picture displayed properly as WB backdrop.

[ppill]

A little utility called ColourLock might help.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meega

Isn't there a tooltype NOREMAP for this sort of thing? Or is that just to stop old icons getting their colours swapped about?

Thank you. I tried the tooltype, but it didn't work as expected. Workbench 3.0 just seems to epicly fail with background images It's for backgrounds. Icons with swapped colors are usually replaced by glow icons.

Originally Posted by alphonsus

If your colour pens on the image aren't in the same order Workbench has allocated them, you will get this problem, though I believe it only extends as far as pen21 or so (for pointer colours),

I always use the Workbench palette, which I grab with Adpro (after grabbing the screen, just lock the palette). I don't think the palette not matching is the problem.

Originally Posted by alphonsus

Can you actually get a HAM mode for Workbench? I read that even if you twaeked the screenmodes you get an AGA screenmode regardless, because Workbench doesn't understand HAM.

Yes, you can I've already seen it in action with some ham icons. Both Ham6 and Ham8 work.

Originally Posted by thor

You could get the bitplane addresses from WB screen like this:

	move.l	intuitionbase,a6
	lea	wbname(pc),a0
	jsr	_LVOLockPubScreen(a6)
	move.l	d0,a0
	beq	error
	move.l	sc_RastPort+rp_BitMap(a0),a0

wbname	dc.b	"Workbench",0

You have then 8 bitplane pointers from bm_Planes(a0) to bm_Planes+28(a0). Should work (don't blame me if not, it's late ), but I haven't tested it. But I somewhat doubt it will help you with getting the HAM8 picture displayed properly as WB backdrop.

Thank you. Yeah, I somehow have some doubts, too. No matter, I'm going to try it anyway

Originally Posted by ppill

A little utility called ColourLock might help.

Thank you, too I'll try later this evening, and I'll keep my fingers crossed...

[meega]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Icons with swapped colors are usually replaced by glow icons.

In 3.0? Glow icons are later, aren't they?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meega

In 3.0? Glow icons are later, aren't they?

There are actually NewIcons versions of the glow icon sets. They're probably older than the 3.5 (???) versions. I just downloaded them from aminet years ago, and it's probably how glow icons started out. I can upload them to the zone if you want.

[ant512]

If you do manage to get a HAM8 picture on your desktop, I imagine you'll suddenly find that you've got no graphics mem left to do anything else.

[thomas]

I always use the Workbench palette, which I grab with Adpro

It does not work this way. Workbench always dithers the background picture into the screen's pen system and it takes care that a reasonable number of pens stays free for applications. So you cannot use a picture which has as many colors as the screen. You have to use a picture with less colors. Best is if the picture has half the number of colors as the screen has pens. So if your Workbench screen has 64 colors, your background picture should not have more than 32 colors.

It does not matter which palette the picture has. Only the first and the last four pens are reserved by Workbench. The remaining colors change on every reboot, especially if you use remapped icons (NewIcons, GlowIcons). It's just wasted time to grab the Workbench screen first.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by ant512

If you do manage to get a HAM8 picture on your desktop, I imagine you'll suddenly find that you've got no graphics mem left to do anything else.

I'm using FBlit. With that I've got 1634032 bytes of chip mem free when I use a 256 color/ham8 workbench and a 256 color/ham8 back drop image (692x544). FBlit is a great utility for saving a ton of chip mem It also allows using NewIcons RTG option without a gfx card. Makes it store all icons in fast mem isnstead of chip!

Originally Posted by thomas

It does not work this way. Workbench always dithers the background picture into the screen's pen system and it takes care that a reasonable number of pens stays free for applications. So you cannot use a picture which has as many colors as the screen. You have to use a picture with less colors. Best is if the picture has half the number of colors as the screen has pens. So if your Workbench screen has 64 colors, your background picture should not have more than 32 colors.

Oh brother That's a very sad state of affairs you've described here, thomas. Why on earth did they implement it in this braindead manner? Thanks for explaining it, though. You've saved me quite some time fiddling for nothing

Originally Posted by thomas

It does not matter which palette the picture has. Only the first and the last four pens are reserved by Workbench. The remaining colors change on every reboot, especially if you use remapped icons (NewIcons, GlowIcons). It's just wasted time to grab the Workbench screen first.

Yes, the colors can change. Using the program FullPalette allows you to have a fixed palette. I was planning on using this, but seeing there is no point, I think I'm just going to forget about the whole deal. Thank goodness it's different for icons (these work great in both ham6 and ham8).