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Want to use your Desktop for more than just a mess of icons? Desktastic lets you take notes, draw humorous pictures, and scribble to your heart's content. Desktastic covers your desktop with an invisible "white board" layer, allowing you to write notes, thoughts, drawings, charts, whatever you want, right on your screen.

Desktastic 2.0 is a fast download at just 190k.

To use Desktastic:
• Launch the program
• Click on the "Draw Tool" icon
• Click and drag anywhere on your desktop to scribble

The Desktastic tools appear as a row of buttons in the left margin of your screen:
• Draw Tool
- Lets you write, scribble, or draw on the desktop. You can use a mouse or trackpad (shades of kindergarten fingerpainting!), but the Wacom Graphire2 graphics tablet Wacom Graphire2 graphics tablet I used mostly is ideal. Here's a shot of my name signed on my cluttered desktop.

This thing could get very addictive.

Before Desktastic:

After Desktastic:

Desktastic's invisible "white board" layer sits above your icons, but underneath all your windows, thus making it impossible to click any desktop icons. If you wish to still have access to some icons, you can split your Desktastic whiteboard in two.
• Choose Preferences from the Desktastic menu
• Check "Show Desktop Separation Line"
• Click "OK"
• Click and drag the desktop separation line to your preferred position

Now, the left half of the Desktastic layer will be your white board, and the right half will allow you to click "through" to your desktop to access icons.

It would be nice if there were an built-in option to save the priceless art you create with Desktastic. Screenshots are the workaround. It would also be convenient to have a Command-Z Undo for the last action in the case of boo-boos, rather than having to go to the eraser (which works very well) each time, or to have a select function in the Clear tool.

However, thoise are relatively minor niggles. Desktastic works well, and it's fun.

System requirements:
Requires Mac OS X 10.1

Desktastic is $8.95 demoware

For more information, visit:
http://www.panic.com/desktastic/

From Jonathan Tyzack

Hi Charles,

in response to Richard Hadfield:

It is no surprise that he can't print to his LaserJet 4M from Jaguar - there isn't a driver for it in the default Jaguar install. I suggest he download Gimp-print (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15970&db=mac) which lets Jaguar print to many more printers, including the LaserJet 4M. Many older USB printers are also supported with Gimp-print, so if you previously haven't been able to do so, it is worth checking the list at the following link to see if yours is there:

http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Supported_Printers.php3

In contrast to many of the very negative comments I've seen here about printing in Jaguar, my experiences have been greatly improved over both OS 9, 10.1.x and 10.0.x. It is much, much faster than in OS 9 (takes mere seconds to spool to print whereas it would take a minute or more for an equivalent job in OS9) and 10.1.x; it is hugely more flexible with numerous methods of connecting to the printer (by IP being the most beneficial to me as my printers are on an ethernet network); and, relative to 10.1.x, has much greater depth of driver support owing to its CUPS basis. Also, it is considerably easier to print from X11 applications if you have XFree86 installed, and it is much easier to print to two different printers at once than it was before (which IIRC was actually impossible in OS 9 and earlier). There are also the added benefits of being able to print to shared printers - even those attached to Windows machines (even though the setting up of this is not so easy as it could be... but that's PC's for you ;-).

I think I have also seen someone complain in a letter to you that the new Print Centre doesn't show as much detail as in 10.1.x. Well, it does, but you have to double click your printer's name in the Print Centre "Printer List" window first. This opens a second window that shows the individual jobs etc for that particular printer. This is slightly different to 10.1.x as the equivalent window would open automatically when you started a print job... this no longer happens in Jaguar.

Overall, for me, printing in Jaguar is a vastly significant improvement over anything the Mac has had before.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan;

Thanks for the helpful tips and info.

Charles

Removing Script Menu from Jaguar?

From James Song

Hi Charles,

I inadvertently launched the Script menu.menu thingie in the Applescript folder under Jaguar. Now I can't find the process name or find out how to kill it. My menu bar is getting a bit cluttered, especially with long program names running. Do you know the name of the process or how to kill it? Thanks

james

Hi james;

Regrettably, I don't, but I hope someone rading this will.

Charles

On killing the Classic Mac OS (don't be too quick to judge Mr. Moore)

From Martin A. Totusek

Some folks thought Charles W. Moore of AppleLinks.com was hard on APPLE about killing booting into the regular Mac OS, and publicly attacked Mr. Moore about it. They should should reconsider their judgments; Mr. Moore was actually quite gentle compared to many other Mac users (and APPLE doesn't at this time have any proposed Federal agreements pending and/or proposed Federal court orders to support any non-OS X regular Mac OS versions, unlike Microsoft, which has such things pending, and all of them either requiring or ordering MS to support quite a number of versions of pre-XP/pre-Windows 2000 versions of DOS and Windows).

For just one example, check out this article:

The Worm In The Apple - Home

September 10 - A new kind of terrorist strike

"A day before the anniversary of the most terrible terrorist strike in history, Apple has made an announcement that for most old Mac users will probably have the same emotional impact as the events of 11/9/2001. We are referring of course to the announcement that from Jan. 1st, 2003, all new Macs will boot exclusively from Mac OS X.

"This decision marks the end of an era, not only for the classic Mac OS, but also for Apple. For many years the signs were there for all to see, but this latest development has made it abundantly clear that Apple is no longer the innovating, open-minded, revolutionary and sometimes wacky company we all knew and loved for all these years. All good things come to an end, and Apple is now officially a big, faceless corporation which is trying very hard to follow the monopolistic road paved by Microsoft..."

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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