The shell loaded fine, by default it uses graphics from the Enlightenment theme BlueSteel, and presents out of the box with the distinctive E dragbar , a functional tasks display, termed the 'icon-box', (which scrolls left & right, and has a functional thumb!), a system tray, an instance of the LSLM resource meter module for Litestep, and an instance of MrJuke's lsMail. Right clicking the desktop loads up a popup menu structure which includes your explorer Start Menu structure, as well as links to the control panel, items for recycling, shutting down and configuring the shell, and the usual collection of system utilities. Plus, the menu automatically uses your existing system color scheme (note, on first triggering of the menu, it reads your entire 'Start Menu' structure by default, which could take a little time to load, so give it a minute or so to cache up). If you check out the raw graphics files in the themes directories, you'll see that it's using PNG files as well as bmps (actually supports the whole list: JPG, PNG, BMP & TIF), this shell is definitely equipped with the full complement of power config toys!:) In addition, you'll find that the native drag-n-drop support is already configured in the default theme: dragging a bmp onto the desktop applies the image as the wallpaper. Very snazzy!

Graphite is pretty light too, with NT Workstation's TaskManager showing the graphite.exe process using 3020k of memory. Heh, for my screenshot I tried to get the lslm cpu meter to jump up a bit to show off the vis graphic I made to match the theme graphics, and it was a genuine effort to get the cpu meter to jump much at all.<g>

Graphite includes a separate app, gselect.exe, to change themes, which appears below the Settings menu, as the 'Change Theme' item. From it's droplist, you can select the other three themes that ship with the shell: one using the Enlightenment BlueHeart theme, one using E's Brushed Metal theme's graphics, and one to demonstrate configuring the shell using PerlScript. Note: The Perl scripting variant will NOT function without the separate ActiveState ActivePerl download, so don't try selecting it without the supporting material!, or may have to either manually kill the shell and launch a new one, or shutdown and restart your box:P

Documentation is included in the form of the 'graphite.chm' help file, which is linked in the menu under the 'Help' item. The help file includes the following material:

* A discussion of the core concept of the shell, 'Theme Scripting'
* A list of desktop and shortcut events
* A HOWTO section that covers creating menus and shortcuts
* A full properties lists for the Desktop, menu Shell and Shortcut objects
* A brief discussion and example of using the jscript and PerlScript engines.

So how does Graphite work? Well on load up of the graphite.exe, the shell simply changes to the either the .\themes\default or last-saved themes directory, checks the local theme.ini file for the engine type and script file name (usually theme.js when using jscript), and then begins executing the designated script file. Jscript is reasonably well documented over at Microsoft, and is well beyond the bounds of this simple article, (not to mention that I'm still sorting it out myself<g>), but here's a little info about how to make sense of the theme.js file.:

If you open up the .\graphite\themes\default\theme.js file in a text editor, you'll find at the top it uses a variety of 'var' lines. These are variable declarations, and/or assignments (familiar stuff if you've ever used a programming language), that is, they create memory space for a variable, and in some cases assign it a value, using a '=' sign. Like so:
var caption = 'graphite :: Blue Steel';
The above creates a variable named 'caption', and assigns the new variable the value 'graphite :: Blue Steel'. The semicolon at the end is an end-of-line marker required at the end of every line of jscript. Also, you'll notice a fair number of lines beginning with '//', these are comments, to make the script more readable, and are not executed.

Browsing through the file, you'll find that it's comprised of a series of sections:

• The top section contains variable declarations and/or assignments (where the majority of the lines beginning with 'var' are).

• The section marked '//Menu items' creates a set of array's which defines the menu structures, icon images used for each, and descriptive text strings.

From there, the script then sets up a series of functions to perform the work of the interface (functions are self-contained code blocks that perform some task, and then return to the point in the script that called them):

• The '// main command parser' function, which is the primary event-handling portion of the script. That is, anytime there is an event triggered (right-click the desktop, click a short cut etc.), the result is run through this portion of the script to determine what action should be taken (popup a desktop menu, run a program etc.).

• You'll find a function that handles passing commands from a desktop Winamp control panel to the Winamp app (implemented in the BlueHeart theme, select it, to see this in action).

• Functions that handle creating, destroying and right-click display of the menu

• A function labeled, '// shell is going down; do any cleanups here' takes care of shutting things down cleanly by releasing memory for all desktop objects etc.

• Functions that handle mouse button press and release, and drag & drop onto desktop shortcuts.

• Functions that handle drag & drop onto the desktop.

• Functions handling the arrow-up and down shortcuts, and dragbar left & right arrows and center portion clicks.

• A systray function which sets up the tray

• A wharf section which defines desktop wharf items (Litestep wharf modules are supported here, lslm.dll and alsclock are used in the themes bundled by the shell).

• A desktop section where the Desktop Area specs are set

• Material to handle the desktop icon box (AKA tasks list)

• And finally, a command to automatically popup the about box on shell load (you'll probably want to comment this item out, once you've seen it a few times:P)

In summary, installing Graphite and getting it upright is a pretty simple process, with a minimum of end-user configuration required to make it run. The shell includes a fair amount of functionality right out of the box, and using the bundled prefabricated themes seems to work just fine. Obviously, tackling the creation of a fully-scripted Graphite theme in jscript or Perl will not be an easy process for the casual user, but for folks sincerely interested in asserting the maximum amount of control over their desktop, it is almost certainly one of the most powerful tools available. Give it a run, it'll knock your socks off!:D Graphite Homepage.