Making your OS/2 System look like heaven


 * Date: 1995-09
 * Versions: OS/2 2.x, Warp


 * Making your OS/2 desktop look GREAT!
 * by Terry Lin

Introduction
It's no doubt that OS/2 is one of the most powerful 32-bit operating systems today (at least far better than win95!). Superior multitasking, a 100% object-oriented shell, and uncountable features make it a power user's dream.

However, on top of this powerhouse lies a modest user interface, which by default looks *very* drab in contrast to win95 or X-Windows. Colors are pretty ugly, default font selections are plain and repetitive, and the bitmaps that come with Warp get boring real fast.

This document provides advice and pointers to resources to make your desktop look like heaven, beating the crap out of Win95 and somewhat similar to NextStep or Motif. Take a look at DESKTOP.BMP, my desktop, and compare it to yours... If you think yours needs some help, read on! (if you think yours is better than mine, send me mail with a .BMP of your desktop attached)

Starting off...
To be able to accomplish this nearly impossible feat of making an OS/2 desktop aesthetically pleasing.... you'll need these two files (all from hobbes)

PMJPG173.ZIP /os2/graphics             - PM Jpeg, EXCELLENT image editor WPS_ART.ZIP /multimedia/bmp            - Some excellent bitmaps for WPS Which look good on a 256 color display -> 32 colors on desktop


 * NOTE TO THOSE WHO DO CANNOT DISPLAY 8514/a 256 COLOR ICONS

All the button bitmaps in WPS_ART.ZIP are in 8514/a .BMP format. Unless you have a display which is capable of displaying them, they will all appear as black squares. However, hope is not lost :)... simply follow these steps to get them to work on your system


 * 1) Open Icon Editor
 * 2) Load a .BMP file which won't display
 * 3) Type CTRL-L (Device->List)
 * 4) Select 8514/a (1.2)
 * 5) Click on "View" - the bitmap should now appear (with no preview)
 * 6) Open PMJPEG
 * 7) Make sure you have iconedit in the foreground (not hidden)
 * 8) Go to Capture->Area of Desktop
 * 9) Highlight the area in iconedit where you can see the enlarged bitmap
 * 10) The bitmap is now in PMJPEG
 * 11) Resize the bitmap to the size indicated in iconedit... and save it as a normal bitmap.

Cut and paste does NOT work... you must use the capture method described above.

Creating Beautiful Button Bars
A unique feature of OS/2 is the ability to use a bitmap as the background of any folder. Using this feature to it's potential allows you to make some of the prettiest button bars ever known to computing. You can now SCRAP Launchpad!

Button-bar bitmaps are simply a small image which always has a squarish area to place an icon. However, becuase you are using a bitmap, the square area may be anything from a stone texture to a 3d-gradient. When tiled in a folder, you get unlimited positions in which you can place icons. For good examples of nice button-bar bitmaps, check out BUT_S3R.BMP and BUT_STUC.BMP in WPS_ART.ZIP. All are seamless and beautiful. Check out the right side of my desktop, as well as the folder "Devices".

OS/2 doesn't allow lining up of icons (unlike windows), so you must select your view as "Non-grid" and manually move your icons around so that they fit in the square areas, which can be a painful task. Be sure of the order in which you want to place your icons, since it will be difficult to modify it later. And... don't try to make it work with either of the "Flowed" views, you can't adjust the spacing and it is unlikely that you can make it fit perfectly in the bitmap.

You can give an illusion of a button-bar by simply moving the folder so that the title-bar is off screen. This of course limits you to place them on the left side or the top side of the screen, but that's where most people place button bars anyways. Also, it is likely that OS/2 will place scroll-bars in the folder as a result of moving your icons around... so the only solution is to also hide them be sizing the window off the screen.

Creating Beautiful Lists
Another thing you can do with folder bitmaps is to create a chiseled 3d gradient list. With the OS/2 "Non-flowed" with "Small icons" view, you get a organized list, albeit on a plain color background.

With list-bitmaps, such as BUT_L_R.BMP, each list item is placed within a chiseled 3d gradient list box, which makes it look a lot better. However, it's also very tricky. You must make sure that each item fits perfectly within its box, otherwise it will go out of sync and not look right.

To make it look correct, you should know that OS/2 scales the height of a bitmap depending on it's width. So, if it doesn't fit, adjust the width until it does. Now your list looks amazingly cool! Check out the "Internet" folder on my desktop, it's a gradient list of my commonly used internet resources.

A tiled bitmap maximum size is the actual size of the bitmap itself. OS/2 only scales the bitmap smaller when you make the folder smaller than the width or height of the bitmap. So if you find that your bitmap is too small, then just resize it under PMJpeg. I had to do quite a trial-and-error resizing with my list bitmap, so it takes patience and time.

Changing System Fonts
You're probbaly sick of System Proportional being everywhere in dialog boxes and help windows. And you've probably noticed that you can't change it through the font palette or scheme palette. The reason is that '10.System Proportional' is set in your OS2.INI file as being the default sytsem font. You can modify that however with the following REXX program:


 * BEGIN SYSFONT.CMD

/* */ call RxFuncAdd "SysIni", "RexxUtil", "SysIni" AppName = "PM_SystemFonts" KeyName = "DefaultFont" FontName = "6.System VIO" call SysIni "USER", AppName, KeyName, FontName||"0"x exit
 * END SYSFONT.CMD

Modify "fontname" to the font of your choice, in the format of "size.fontname". The fontname is case sensitive, check with your Font Palette for the exact name. And BTW, 6.System VIO is a GOOD choice for a system font because it's a monospaced font which IMHO is better for dialog boxes and help files. It's common for people to choose 10.Helv but note that all your tabbed dialog boxes will use the ATM font 10.Helvetica which is of course ugly (I don't know how to get around it). Another thing is that 6.System VIO has a decent bold font... which is used heavily in help files, 10.Helv in contrast has a screwed up bold font.

On the note of ATM fonts, be sure not to use any of them as your display fonts. Beside the obvious fact that they are not anti-aliased (ie smoothened..therefore jaggy), they are not pure bitmapped fonts like Helv and System Proportional, which leads into performance slowdowns.

Icons
Here my advice is pretty obvious... use pretty ones! Although my desktop only uses icons provided by OS/2, I am still looking for nice ones. The 256icons.zip don't display correctly on my machine. If anyone can help me here, feel free to send me some advice!

Analog Clock
Get that analog clock in!

Always have the system analog clock running. Regardless of whether you look at it or not, it makes your os/2 desktop a lot better :) Make sure to change the default color configuration which is cleverly hidden in page 2 of the View Section in the Settings Notebook.

Hints in designing your desktop
Always use a desktop background bitmap that cheers you up. It's surprising how much is can change your general computing mood when you pick the right one. I personally adore gray skies/rain, as a dreamy thing. That's why my background is gray clouds. It's even better if you can get a nice 800x600x256 image, but OS/2 requires you to run at 16-bit color to display it correctly.

Never entirely clutter the borders of your desktop with button bars. It gives a "closed" and "reduced" feeling to your workspace. Unless you like that of course.

Obviously, only keep stuff you use often in the button bars. Put the very unused stuff in a folder you can access through a button bar.

Nothing good ever lasts. Eventually you'll get tired of a certain design, so don't think a good desktop will last forever!

System considerations
All those bitmaps will of course eat up a chunk of your memory. To do most of the stuff I mentioned here would require 12+ MEGS at least, preferably 16 MEGS, to perform decently. If you only have 8 I believe having many different bitmaps in use will slow your system down considerably because OS/2 will have to swap a lot.

Special message to anyone out there who thinks making a desktop look nice is a waste of time (as well this document)
The more you use OS/2, the more you need it to look and feel the way you want it to. Some people can't live with OS/2's default scheme because they need their system not only to be powerful but to *look* powerful. Okay??



I hope you got enough advice here to show any win95 fanatic how good OS/2 can look, and how powerful os/2 is in the first place. However, there's only so much tricks can do. The bitmaps are all tricks to make it look nice, therefore it makes them inflexible and hard to maintain.

Many suggestions to IBM are as follows:


 * Allow grid icons. Your arrange function is basically useless to me because the distance between icons is dependent on the title length. UGGGLLLYYYY
 * Kill the forced scroll bars in flowed and non-flowed views. Why do they have to be there if there's nothing to scroll?
 * You've hardcoded the gray color in your tabbed dialog boxes. Don't.
 * Allow hiding of title bar
 * Allow window roll-up. I don't know why anybody has done window-roll-up, the best way to "minimize" a window, other than in professional paint programs.
 * Add customizeable title/menu bar height (ala win95)
 * Add customizeable scroll-bar size (ala win95)
 * Revamp your standard 3-d dialog .DLL's to nicer ones
 * ANTI-ALIAS ATM FONTS! My gawd most of them are unbearable to look at. Most look like some crude drawing that a kid made up with MS PaintBrush.
 * Provide more screen bitmap fonts. There are basically none out there other than the ones you provide.  I am really looking forward to a decent News Gothic bitmapped font, both standard and italic.

Happy Computing!!! Terry Lin Can someone buy me a 21" monitor??? :)