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Mayabg 2000 Help |
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Mayabg is a program from 
(God N Locomotive Works) to set and control wallpaper for the desktop window
on Windows (95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP); it is a 32-bit client, and will
not run under Windows 3.1. It displays a main window showing, in stela
format, the current date; the stela window does not show all details of
the Mayan date, but the main features are there.
To the right 
is the normal,
stela
display, showing the ISIG,, the Long Count, the
tzolkin,
the haab and the ruling Lord of the Night.
Above 
is the captioned display, showing
the English translation of the date, including positional information not
found on the stela display. (If the images overlap, you may need
to widen your browser window.)
To see a shot of what mayabg looks like in use, click here.
The desktop wallpaper can be chosen from a large number of options, in either color bitmaps or in an “engraved” format that is supposed to look something like carved slate. Samples will be shown later.
By default, mayabg places itself in the center of the screen, without a caption bar and without an icon appearing in your taskbar. Menu options allow you to select a left or right placement in addition to the default center location. There are many other options, all of which are discussed in the topics listed below.
| Click On: | For Information About: |
|---|---|
| Installing Mayabg | Installing Mayabg |
| Mayabg Display | Organization and interpretation of the mayabg display |
| Using Mayabg | Using Mayabg |
| Color Editor and Color Choices | Using the Color Editor |
| Samples of the Wallpaper Glyphs | Samples of all the glyphs you can choose for wallpaper |
| Packing List of Glyphs Included | Packing list showing all the glyphs included with mayabg |
| Troubleshooting | The gotchas |
| Changing Your BITS Directory | How to change where mayabg finds its bitmaps |
| Mayan Chronology | Chronology of the Mayan civilization |
| The Mayan Calendar | A basic introduction to the Mayan calendar. |
| References | References |
| How to Contact the Author | How to Contact the Author |
| Acknowledgments | Acknowledgments |
Using mayabg is extremely simple, and the best way is place
a link to it it into your startup group; to start immediately, just double-click
on the 
icon.
There are no command-line arguments.
Once it is running, you can leave mayabg alone if you wish. To do more, however, you should click with the right mouse-button anywhere in the display, which will display a pop-up menu:
Installing mayabg is even simpler than running it. Simply
unzip mayabg.zip using winzip or pkunzip, making sure
that you use the “Use Folder Names” option, anyplace that you like.
You will have a Bits directory wherever you unzipped it, and in
that directory are all the files required to support mayabg:
this help file and supporting GIF and JPEG images, mayabg.exe,
a couple of DLLs, and countless Windows BMP files.
Please see the section Samples of the Wallpaper Glyphs
for the annotated packing lists of all the BMP files, which are
the Mayan glyphs needed by the program.
Once you have the Bits directory, simply place a link to Bits\mayabg.exe
into your startup group. You can start mayabg immediately by double-clicking
on the icon; after
it has been started, just right-click on the display window (the stela)
to see and use the menu.
The normal display.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ISIG | Initial Series Introductory Glyph; the central element of the upper part of this glyph shows the Patron God of the current Haab month. Here, since the month is “Kankin,” the Patron God is the “God K Monster”. |
| 12 | The face of the god of number 12; the number of baktuns that have elapsed since 4 ’Ahaw 8 Kumk’u. |
| Baktun | The Maya word was probably “pi” or “pih”; 144,000 days, about 400 years (20 Katuns). |
| 19 | The face of the god of number 19; the number of katuns that have elapsed since the end of the last baktun. |
| Katun | 7,200 days, about 20 years (20 Tuns). |
| 7 | The face of the god of number 7; the number of tuns that have elapsed since the end of the last katun. |
| Tun | 360 days, slightly less than a year (18 Uinals). |
| 15 | The face of the god of number 15; the number of uinals that have elapsed since the end of the last tun. |
| Uinal | 20 days, the length of a Haab month or of a Veintena cycle. |
| 6 | The face of the god of number 6; the number of days that have elapsed since the end of the last uinal. |
| Kin | One day, the basic unit of Maya timekeeping. |
| 11 | The face of the god of number 11; the day number in the Trecena. |
| Cimi | The day of the Veintena; here, the day of death. |
| G9 | The Lord of the night. |
| Glyph F | Always found with the Lords of the Night glyphs; it probably means something like “G9 is the burden of ??”, ?? being whatever god is named by the F glyph. |
| 9 | The face of the god of number 9; the day of the Haab month. |
| Kankin | The current month of the Haab. |
The expanded display.
Most of the information shown is covered in the The Mayan Calendar pages, so I won’t cover it here.
This is what allows you to obtain a more informative display of the stela window.
| Without Caption Bar | With Caption Bar |
|---|---|
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|
This is what allows you to run mayabg without a button taking up space in your taskbar; note that after changing this option, you must restart mayabg.
By default, mayabg centers itself in your desktop window both horizontally and vertically. If you choose “Display Left” or “Display Right” from the menu, then mayabg will still center itself vertically, but will center itself in the appropriate half of the desktop. Choosing “Display Left Edge” or “Display Right Edge” will set the left or right edge of the stela against the right or left edge of the desktop.
This menu selection allows you to choose the three-dimensional,
“stone” style of wallpaper 
.
The types of glyphs used as wallpaper are common to both mono and 3-D styles.
This menu selection allows you to choose the standard, black-and-white,
monochrome style of wallpaper 
.
The types of glyphs used as wallpaper are common to both color and 3-D
styles.
Selecting one of these determines how your Mayan wallpaper is used.
Multiple glyphs can be tiled across the desktop, a single glyph can be
centered or centered and stretched.
Selecting one of these determines how your Mayan wallpaper is used.
Multiple glyphs can be tiled across the desktop, a single glyph can be
centered or centered and stretched.
Selecting this item pops up the About window, giving credits & copyrights.
Now, how did I get here?
Exits mayabg, which will save your current settings in the registry.
Selecting “None” as your wallpaper will allow you to use any other wallpaper with the stela. Mayabg co-operates well with Wallpaper Changer, for example.
Note: Some browsers remap the colors of the 3-D images so that the 3-D effect is lost. The images under the “3-D” column are supposed to have an engraved effect, as if they were carved in stone. They’ll show up fine when used as wallpaper on your Windows workstation, but download one of the 3-d images and set it as wallpaper by hand just to make sure.
From Scientific American, August, 1986.
There’s very little that can go wrong (famous last words). The one problem you might run into is that when mayabg starts up, the desktop is not tiled with your chosen glyph but has a single glyph centered on the desktop. To fix this, just go to your control panel, double-click the “Display” icon and select the “Background” tab; near the bottom of the panel, select the “Tile” checkbox, then click “Apply”. That should result in your glyph being tiled all over your desktop window.
If you are using the Microsoft Plus! Pack, or running NT, then also make sure that you don’t have the “stretch to fit screen” option on, either (this option is also in the “Display” properties, under the “Plus!” tab; it is the bottom checkbox):
Unless, of course, that’s what you want. Using the color bitmaps as a tiled background results in a pretty busy screen. Setting the “Stretch desktop wallpaper...” option is more bearable. Still, I prefer the engraved appearance, myself.
You can change the location of your “bits” directory only by editing the registry, under
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\God N Locomotive Works\MayaBG\CurrentVersion\Bitmaps]
I’ve supplied a .reg file which you can edit, in notepad (for example), and double-click to change the directory. However, you really should not need to do this if you followed the installation instructions. By default, the Bits directory is where the application runs from, and it will write the location into the registry absent instructions to do otherwise.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
NO WARRANTY
BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED
TO IN WRITING WILL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING
ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF
THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS
OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR
THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY
OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
However, if you find any bugs, send me mail and explain
in as much detail as you can exactly what you were doing and how to reproduce
the problem. The clearer you are in your description, the quicker I can
respond.
| e-mail: | |
|---|---|
| www: | http://www.pauahtun.org |
| anonymous ftp: | www.pauahtun.org |
If you use mayabg and find it useful, tell me and tell your Mayanist friends. You must have a lot of those.
Ivan Van Laningham
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Main web site: http://www.pauahtun.org
