Copyright 1984,1988,1990,1993-1995,2000-2001 by Rick Jansen, all rights reserved.

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December 14th 2001

Latest news:
------------
December 2001:
All you KDE-users can now be even happier with a KDE-enabled Xsnow 1.42!
The snow will magnificently wipe out your icons, but not to worry, they're
not really gone. By wiping with a window or something you can make them
reappear. Car owners are used to this for years. 

December 2000:
After 5 years here's a new Xsnow! The program has been around bit, and
is now even making it snow on many Windows machines, so it's high time
for an improved verson for X. Xsnow 1.41 works with modern X servers
like XFree86, where older versions made snow build up somewhere in the
sky at times, defying gravity.

Xsnow 1.41 features a new Santa, many thanks to Thomas Linder
(Thomas.Linder@gmx.net).

It is now possible to slow Santa down. See the option -santaupdatefactor


Where to get Xsnow:
-------------------
Xsnow is available from the author's WWW page:
  
  http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/

Click on the appropriate item and the tar file will be downloaded
upon your request.

Xsnow is also archived at ftp.x.org in the contrib/games directory.


How to compile:
---------------
To build:
	xmkmf
	make depend
	make
 
To run:
	./xsnow
    or:
	./xsnow&  (in the background)
 
To install (be root):
	make install
	make install.man

If xmkmf does not work and you cannot get a working Makefile that way
then try compiling yourself, eh, xsnow this way: 

	cc -o xsnow snow.c  -lXext -lX11 -lXpm -lm -lsocket -lnsl
 
gcc, SUN Solaris users without a C-compiler, but with gcc installed,
try the following two commands. The first compiles Xsnow, the second
links Xsnow.
 
	gcc -c -O2 -I/usr/openwin/include -DSVR4 -DSYSV xsnow.c
	gcc -o xsnow xsnow.o -O2 -L/usr/openwin/lib -lXext -lX11 -lXpm -lm -lsocket -lnsl
 
Note: Xsnow-1.41 needs the Xpm library. It is available from:

	ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/libraries/

The current Xpm version is xpm3.4k                                                       


VMS
---
This distribution contains a file 'make.com' to build Xsnow on
VMS systems, and 'xsnow.hlp'. To build type '@make' in the
xsnow directory. Another make.com is make2.com 

Virtual window managers
-----------------------
For compatibility with virtual window managers Xsnow uses 'vroot.h',
an include file that makes X programs compatible with window managers
like swm and tvtwm. The complete vroot distribution is available from
'ftp.x.org' in the contrib directory as 'vroot.shar.Z'.
Vroot was written by Andreas Stolcke <stolcke@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU>, 9/7/90
and is copyright 1991 by Andreas Stolcke, copyright 1990 by Solbourne 
Computer Inc.

Silicon Graphics IRIX 5.x
------------------------
Silicon Graphics and Irix 5.x users may not see any snow or
Santa at all, as long the desktop icons are visible. To
circumvent this problem issue this command:

   /usr/lib/desktop/telldesktop quit

The icons will disappear and xsnow will work perfectly. To
restart the desktop just start /usr/lib/desktop/startdesktop
or select Desktop->Home Directory from the toolchest.

It's even possible to have both - desktop icons and xsnow
(and even multiple desks). You need to modify the window
manager's resource file 4DWm, the file 

  ~/.desktop-`hostname`/4DWm. 

Example:

*Global.backgroundDescription:   -execute /etc/killall -TERM
xsnow ; /usr/local/bin/xsnow
*Desk 1.backgroundDescription:   -execute /etc/killall -TERM
xsnow ; /usr/local/bin/xsnow
*Desk 2.backgroundDescription:   -execute /etc/killall -TERM
xsnow ; /usr/local/bin/xsnow

Restart the he toolchest and Xsnow should appear. What this
does is stop the currently running Xsnow and start a new one
when you switch to another desktop.

HP and hp-ux:
-------------
HP also uses a Workspace Manager which may interfere with Xsnow.
If Xsnow does not appear:
In the "Style Manager", choose "Backdrop" and select "NoBackdrop".
You should now be able to run Xsnow.


Update history
--------------
 1.22 Really building up snow at bottom of screen
 1.22 A choice of Santa's. Thanks to Holger Veit (Holger.Veit@gmd.de)
      for Santa no. 2. Santa 1 was derived from 2 by scaling down.
 1.23 Aaaargh! gnu C doesn't like the initialization of the new
      Santa pixmaps. Extra braces do the trick, which is so often the case
 1.24 Deleted PaintSnowAtBottom. It's more of a surprise this way.
 1.24 Bug removed with windows off-screen to the left
 1.25 Rudolf's red nose. Silly. Grmbll.
 1.25 Bug with -nokeepsnowonwindows removed
 1.27 Bug with erasing snow on top of windows removed
      Erasing of snow at bottom of screen improved in case of expose event
 1.30 Performance improved. Wind.
 1.31 Make.com and xsnow.hlp for VMS
 1.32 unsigned long snowDelay changed to long, as strtoul is troublesome
 1.35 Snow really builds up on windows now, and does not snow on pop-ups.
 1.37 Offset for certain window managers like twm, nokeepsnowonwindows
      and nokeepsnowonscreen are back.
 1.38 Santa is a real snow plough now.
 1.39 usSleep fixed for VMS. Bug resulted in using too much resources.
 1.40 -solidbg for improved performance, memory leak fixed.
 1.41 -santaupdatefactor, fix for X-servers that use backing store, new
			Santa by Thomas Linder
 1.42 Xsnow now works with KDE

 Copyright
 ---------
 Xsnow is available freely and you may give it to other people as is,
 but I retain all rights. Therefore it does not classify as 'Public
 Domain' software. It *is* allowed to package Xsnow for Unix/Linux 
 distributions, CD-Roms etc, and to make the necessary changes to
 makefiles etc. to facilitate this.

Merry X-mas!

Rick Jansen
--
rja@euronet.nl
http://www.euronet.nl/~rja/
