BeTips.net

Having trouble reading your icon text over that snazzy background picture? Just change the background color for that Workspace so it’s similar to the dominant color of the bitmap, and the icon text color will change automatically. Icon text color changes dynamically between black and white depending on the background color, but it can’t determine the dominant color of a background bitmap automatically.
For instance, if you have a very dark picture, just change your background to be black. You might want to turn off icon label backgrounds as well. This will make your icon text color white, which is nicely offset against the dark picture.

If you own a copy of Doom II for Windows, you can use its data files to play Doom II under BeOS.
Download and install Doom from WildCard Design. Then mount your Windows partition and copy DOOM2.WAD into the BeOS Doom installation directory. Rename this file to lowercase: doom2.wad. The next time you run the program, you’ll be running Doom II.

If you’ve used the tip Rename the trash, you may have noticed that right clicking on the link to the trash won’t give you the „Empty Trash“ option, making your new Trash can a little less functional. Or maybe you haven’t renamed the Trash, and would just like to be able to empty it with a quick hotkey.
First, install SpicyKeys. Next, creae a little script by pasting this into any text editor:

rm -rf /boot/home/Desktop/Trash/*

Save this file as /boot/home/config/bin/emptytrash. Launch SpicyKeys and click „Add New SpicyKey“. Under the „Application“ column, type „/bin/sh /boot/home/config/bin/emptytrash“. Now assign a key combination to execute your script. I use Ctrl+Alt+E.

[Editor’s note: Scott Brawner’s experience here is extremely rare — I’ve only ever heard of two instances of this happening. In additon, note that the problems encountered are a result of some combination of Microsoft / PowerQuest technology, not Be’s.]
If you use the included „lite“ version of Partition Magic to create your BeOS partition, be sure to run ScanDisk before proceeding. I didn’t and the partitioning had to be aborted shortly into the process due to an excessive amount of lost clusters. I ended up with a 12MB partition. When using Partition Magic to delete this partiton and start over, it also wiped out two extended Windows partitions, putting the space back into the primary (C:) partition, thinking they were wasted space. One of the partitions was used for practially all of my data, which was lost.

BeOS does not yet support dual video cards. If you do have two video cards installed for the sake of Win98, and BeOS always boots to the secondary (el cheapo) card, simply delete (or move to a backup folder) the secondary video driver file from /boot/beos/system/add-ons/kernel/drivers /bin.
I had this problem when my old Matrox Millenium. BeOS was loading its driver before the driver for my shiny, new Voodoo3. Canning the Matrox driver caused BeOS to recognize the Voodoo3 instead. Sure beats pulling the card between boots…

Note: This tip applies to graphical objects such as polygons, not bitmap images. Bitmap images do have a „flip“ menu option .
It’s not immediately obvious how to produce a mirror image of a graphic in Gobe Productive. Having used other programs, I was hunting around for a menu option. There are none, because none are needed — it’s simpler than that!
Select the object so that its drag points are showing, then select any corner and drag. The graphic resizes as expected. Now, continue to move the drag point past the bounds of the graphic — in other words, turn it inside out. When you move past the bounds, the image will flip automatically.

J.Seemer adds:
Unfortunately this doesn’t preserve the original size, which is one thing you expect when mirroring. To keep at least one dimension you can either press the shift key while dragging or use another point than a corner point for dragging. It’s also a good idea to remember the original value of the changing dimension, which is displayed with the other values in the PartBar at the top of the canvas.
After dragging, double-click in the appropriate dimension field of the PartBar and re-enter the memorized value. You’ll get a perfectly mirrored image.

First things first. In order to play, you will need a fully licensed copy of Quake 2 for Windows. If you don’t have it, get it. It’s pretty cheap. This article is just for getting Quake 2 set up for BeOS users, so from here on out, I’m assuming that we all own the Quake 2 CD.
Download Quake 2 for BeOS and install it into /boot/apps. If you choose another location, please note where you put it.
When you open your Quake2 directory, there is a README file that gives instructions on how to import the game data from your CD. Ignore this. It doesn’t really work too well. We’re going to do it manually.
First, put your Quake 2 for Windows CD into your Be machine and mount it on the desktop (right-click the Desktop, select "Mount" and look for the CD). Open the CD and navigate to /INSTALL/DATA/BASE2Q and find the file PAK0.PAK. Copy this file to /boot/apps/Quake2/baseq2. Rename PAK0.PAK to pak0.pak. BeOS requires that this be lowercase.
This same problem applies to the baseq2/players directory. You need to rename EVERYTHING in this directory to all lower case. But, the good news is, someone has done this for you! Download this version by Sarev and unzip it to /boot/apps/Quake2/baseq2/players .
Lock and load, folks! You’re ready to Quake! If you’re going to use OpenGL, make sure your video card supports the BeOS hardware OpenGL implementation. If it doesn’t, you’ll crash, have to reboot, and set video rendering back to "Software.". In other words, you probably don’t want to have 40 pages of unsaved word processing docs open when you launch Quake 2 for the first time.
See you in the Deathmatch arenas — watch your backs!

Anonymous adds:
You don’t have to use Sarev’s patch. If you want to do it manually, just open copyq2files.sh in a text editor and look for the if statement checking for /quake2. Change this Quake2 (capitalized), save, and run the script again.

[Editor’s note: This is actually a fully documented feature, but many new users seem to miss it…]
Deskbar taking up too much space? Try grabbing the „grippy dots“ at the edge of the Deskbar’s tray and dragging upwards. The Deskbar will be compacted into a very small square. You can still access your running apps by clicking the Registrar dude by the chalkboard. To reverse the process, just drag downwards on the grippy dots.

[Editor’s note: This is quite a hack… not particularly elegant IMO… but it works, I suppose.]
Page 66-67 of the BeOS Bible says:
„Don’t Rename the Trash….you’ve always renamed Windows 95’s Recycle Bin to ‚Garbaj‘,“ and now you’ve grown quite fond of the name….In short, don’t try it“ [get the book for the whole quote].
If you want to have „Garbaj“ on your Desktop, you can make a link to the Trash and hide the real Trash behind the Deskbar.

1. Open Terminal.
2. Enter this: ln -s /boot/home/Desktop/Trash /boot/home/Desktop/Garbaj
3. You should now have an icon labelled „Garbaj“ on your desktop.
4. To complete the effect, drag the real Trash icon behind your deskbar to hide it.

The scenario:
A piece of SPAM arrives in your Inbox and you delete it without reading it. Later, you notice that the mailbox icon in the Deskbar indicates that you have unread mail. You open the Inbox, but there’s nothing there.
The reason:
The system is finding the unread mail in the Trash. To satisfy the background query which is causing this, you must either read the message or empty the Trash. The mailbox icon will report that you have new mail, WHEREVER unread mail is on your system.