To open Wallpaper in the Control Panel desk accessory, under the System 6 series, choose Control Panel from the Apple (Desk Accessory) menu. Using the scroll bar on the left, inside the Control Panel, scroll through the icons representing your cdevs. When you see the Wallpaper icon, click on it once to select it. Wallpaper’s window will appear.
If you’re using System 7 or later, double-click on the Wallpaper file in the Control Panel folder in the System Folder. Wallpaper’s window will appear. You’ll see the same window displayed below, without a row of cdevs scrolled on the left.
Under any System software, one time only, you’ll be greeted by a Wallpaper personalization screen. Enter your name the way you want it to appear on the patterns you edit or create. Your name will be automatically signed to any pattern you edit or create just as you’ve entered it in this personalization dialog. Once you’ve entered your name, you’ll arrive at the Wallpaper window, which will open with all pattern positions empty, except for the ones representing your desktop and Easel, which will show your current desktop pattern.
The image of the Little Mac Monitor, (LMM), at the bottom left, always displays a view of the current desktop pattern, the one in which your screen desktop is painted. Patterns displayed in the LMM, in all the Wallpaper pattern positions, will be saved in their positions when the Wallpaper window is closed.
The Little Mac Monitor and eleven other spaces in the window provide additional functions. Double-clicking on any pattern will bring up that pattern’s Signature/Personalization Dialog, as will the keyboard character “I,” allowing you to name your pattern internally. Then, you can ordinarily save to disk in one of four ways (you cannot save from this demo, though).
The image of the Little Mac CPU (LMC) at the bottom left facilitates the Load and Save command. You can double-click on the LMC to load patterns to desktop. Also, if you drag it to any of the double-outlined boxes, you’ll get a load dialog for that box. For example, if you drag it to the LMM, you’ll load to the desktop. If you drag it to the Easel, you’ll load to the Editor, and if you drag it to any of the Stored-Pattern Spaces, you will load any pattern you select from the load dialog to that indicated space. On the other hand, if you drag a pattern to the LMC from any position in the Wallpaper window, you’ll bring up a Save dialog (not operational in this demo). You can load to desktop by double-clicking on the LMC.
The Easel, to the right of the Little Mac CPU, displays a true-size view of the pattern being edited. Select it (click on it once) and type “L” to load to it from disk, or drag the LMC to it to bring up the same Load Dialog, or drag a pattern to it from any other position in the Wallpaper window to install it in the Editor.
The Pattern Editor (the Editor) displays a magnified view of the pattern shown in the Easel. You may draw in the Editor in four degrees of magnification via the Zoom commands or the magnifying glass tool to create or edit a pattern while you simultaneously view the full size of the pattern in the Easel. The Editor displays the pattern magnified from full size to 16 times size. Because of the size of the Editor area, at 100% view, you will be able to see more than one copy of any pattern under 128x128 in size.
In the Editor you can view and work in up to five different pattern sizes. Under the System 6 series your patterns can be 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 or 64x64 pixels on a side. Under System 7.0, you can use all those sizes and also 128x128 pixel patterns. You can scroll your view in the Editor forever in any direction, and you can see and draw over the dividing lines between the repetitions of a pattern.
The Editor features wrap-around graphics, the first time that this has been implemented. The dividers and the zoomed-out view let you work effectively with the repetitions of your patterns because you can see multiple views as you work. The tools work not only across the dividers, they also wrap around the image in the Editor. Drag your tool off the boundaries of the Editor, and even off the edge of the Wallpaper window.
When creating a pattern, you can start with a clean area by selecting a color in the Color Selector and then dragging the pattern from the Easel outside the Wallpaper window. The Editor will clear to the selected color.
The Wallpaper Info Bar is located under the menu bar. It will display the signature information of any selected pattern, and it will also display update messages.
The Color Selector displays the colors, in a 16x16 palette, which can be applied to the pattern in the Editor. You can paint with these colors, modify them, or add new ones to a maximum of 256. Color Selector displays one row of colors, 16 at a time. Click on a color in the Color Selector to make that the current drawing color. Double-click on a color to change that color; the standard Macintosh Color Picker dialog will appear. If you alter a color that has been used in the pattern in the Editor, all pixels in the pattern that used to be of the old color will switch to the new. This is a good way to make wholesale changes in the color scheme.
But how do you use the other 240 spaces in the palette? If you press the mouse button anywhere in the Color Selector and hold it down for a moment, the entire 16x16 palette will appear as a pop-up menu. Choose any color from the pop-up; it will become the current drawing color, and its row will become the one shown in the Color Selector.
Like the equivalent in the original Control Panel pattern editor in the General cdev, you can click on a color in the Color Selector, then click or drag in the Editor to draw in that color.
The Toolbox is a pop-up menu that lets you switch by keyboard or mouse between several customized standard tools for painting in the Editor (see The Easel, Color Selector and Toolbox, and The Painting tools).
The Stored-Pattern Spaces consist of two columns of 5 positions each, located on the right of the Wallpaper cdev. If you copy a pattern (see How to move, copy and install patterns) into one of the Stored-Pattern Spaces, it will be retained there until you copy another one over it or throw it away by dragging it outside the window.
The Stored-Pattern Spaces are valuable for parking variations of patterns that are in progress before saving them to disk, providing something like a Save As capability. Also, you can store some of your favorite patterns in the Stored-Pattern Spaces for quick access. Whenever you open Wallpaper, your Stored-Pattern Spaces will look just the way you left them. But this is not a substitute for saving to disk (which you cannot do in this demo).
The pattern personalization feature (or signature feature) is a unique component of Wallpaper. When you save a pattern (you cannot, from this demo), your name and the pattern’s name are automatically attached and can be displayed thereafter by anyone who loads the pattern into Wallpaper. The name you used when you personalized Wallpaper the first time you opened it is the artist name that will be automatically attached to the patterns you create or edit. You must type the pattern name into the signature dialog in order to name the pattern. You do that by double-clicking on your pattern when it’s in the Wallpaper window, or by typing “I.” This brings up the pattern personalization dialog. Then when you save the pattern to disk, the default name of the pattern in the save dialog will be the pattern name you entered in the signature dialog. The disk name and the signature personalization name can be different from each other; each has to be separately entered.
If you edit a pattern which someone else made, your name will automatically be entered as the second artist.
You can change the default artist name for single sessions in the Preferences menu choice, and you can edit any signature information in the signature personalization dialog.
You can display and edit patterns’ signature information by double-clicking on any pattern in any doubly-outlined box in the Wallpaper window or by typing “I.”
