Notes from when I downloaded xv from the Internet on 7-3-2002,
compiled and installed it on my jasper machine.

  You can get xv from http://www.trilon.com, i.e.
http://www.trilon.com/xv
http://www.trilon.com/xv/xv.html
http://www.trilon.com/xv/downloads.html
http://www.trilon.com/xv/downloads.html
ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/xv/xv-3.10a.tar.gz


Then
   gzip -d < xv-3.10a.tar.gz | tar xf -
unzipped stuff into my xv-3.10a directory.
   cd xv-3.10a
   make
compiled everything with a
   1506-507 (W) No licenses available. Contact your program supplier to
                add additional users.  Compilation will proceed shortly.
message for every module.  Then a
   su
   make install
installed stuff, ala
      cp xv bggen vdcomp xcmap xvpictoppm /usr/local/bin
      cp docs/xv.man     /usr/local/man/man1/xv.1
      cp docs/bggen.man  /usr/local/man/man1/bggen.1
      cp docs/xcmap.man  /usr/local/man/man1/xcmap.1
      cp docs/xvp2p.man  /usr/local/man/man1/xvpictoppm.1
      cp docs/vdcomp.man /usr/local/man/man1/vdcomp.1
      cp docs/xvdocs.ps* /usr/local/lib

The bottom line was, I now had xv at /usr/local/bin/xv.

So did my displaying of pictures on the root window, work as it did
years ago like I had in my old (8-31-1995) ~/cat bin/background_pic?

# xv -ncols 80 -geometry +1175+817 pics/melanie1.gif &
# xv -ncols 80 -root -quit -rmode 2 pics/melanie4.tif &
/contrib/bin/xv -ncols 80 -root -quit -rmode 4 ~jasper/pics/bothkids2.gif &
# xv -ncols 80 -geometry +1071+810 pics/pic0.gif &

No!!!   Damn!  I suspect it's due to the fact that I'm under the
desktop now and back then, I was just under plain, ol' X.  I could
always RTFM, but I don't have the time now to fool around with it.