- Table of Contents
- XPenguins Applet
XPenguins Applet
The XPenguins Applet, shown in Figure 1, sits in a Panel and when you click the `play' button, will animate a number of cute little penguins in your background window that fall from the top of the screen, walk along the top of windows, up the side of windows, up the side of the screen, and sometimes even levitate. If you get bored of penguins, you can select an alternative theme such as Turtles. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the Panel and choose Panel->Add to panel->Applet->Amusements->XPenguins or you can issue this command at a command prompt: xpenguins_applet &
Usage
The lower two buttons on the applet can be used to start, stop or pause the penguins, and clicking on the larger penguin button brings up the Properties dialog.
Right-clicking on the applet brings up a menu containing the following items:
Properties… — opens the Properties dialog.
Help — displays this document.
About… — shows basic information about XPenguins Applet, including the applet's version and the author's name.
Customization
You can customize XPenguins Applet by right-clicking on it and choosing Properties…. This will open the Properties dialog (shown in Figure 2, which allows you to change various settings.
The properties dialog box is divided into two sections, one for general options, and one for themes.
- General
The properties in the General tab are:
Override theme — each theme sets a default number and speed for the animations, but you can override this here.
Number of toons — can be between 1 and 100.
Frame rate (Hz) — can be between 1 and 100 frames per second. Beware that trying to update 100 penguins 100 times a second may reduce the responsiveness of the buttons on the applet and the properties dialog.
Ignore popup windows — if this is selected then the penguins will walk under some transient `popup' windows such as tooltips.
Do not show gory death sequences — in some themes when the toons die (e.g. when a window is moved over them) the death sequences can be a bit unpleasant.
- Themes
The theme preferences tab, shown in Figure 3, has a variety of themes you can choose from. They are found by default in /usr/share/xpenguins. Note that no themes are provided by xpenguins_applet package; you must have the xpenguins package for the basic themes. Also get the xpenguins_themes package for some juicy extras like The Simpsons and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Possible Bugs
Normally the XPenguins Applet will draw to the root X window of your display. If you run the Nautilus file manager or the Enlightenment window manager then a large `desktop' window may be placed over it, which is drawn to instead. Currently the XPenguins Applet can work with Nautilus 1.0 and Enlightenment 0.16, although it may not work with future versions of these applications.
Authors
The XPenguins Applet was written by Robin Hogan (<R.J.Hogan@reading.ac.uk>). The penguin images in the default theme were taken from Pingus, a free lemmings clone for Linux. You can download more themes from the XPenguins homepage.
License
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
A copy of the GNU General Public License is included as an appendix to the GNOME Users Guide. You may also obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307
USA