XScreenSaver(1)XScreenSaver(1)NAMEwebcollage - decorate the screen with random images from
the web
SYNOPSISwebcollage [-display host:display.screen] [-root] [-ver
bose] [-delay secs] [-timeout secs] [-background bg]
[-filter command] [-filter2 command] [-http-proxy
host[:port]]
DESCRIPTION
The webcollage program pulls random image off of the World
Wide Web and scatters them on the root window. One satis
fied customer described it as "a nonstop pop culture
brainbath." This program finds its images by doing random
web searches, and extracting images from the returned
pages. It places the images on the root window by using
the giftopnm(1), djpeg(1), and xli(1), xv(1), or xloadim
age(1) tools.
webcollage is written in perl(1) and requires Perl 5.
OPTIONSwebcollage accepts the following options:
-root Draw on the root window. This option is mandi
tory: drawing to a window other than the root win
dow is not yet supported.
-verbose or -v
Print diagnostics to stderr. Multiple -v switches
increase the amount of output. -v will print out
only the URLs of the images; -vv will print all
the commands being run; and -vvv will print more
than you care about.
-delay seconds
How long to sleep between images. Default 1 sec
ond. (Remember that this program probably spends
a lot of time waiting for the network.)
-background color-or-ppm
What to use for the background onto which images
are pasted. This may be a color name, a hexadeci
mal RGB specification in the form '#rrggbb', or
the name of a PPM file.
-timeout seconds
How long to wait for a URL to complete before giv
ing up on it and moving on to the next one.
Default 30 seconds.
-filter command
Filter all source images through this command.
The command must take a PPM file on stdin, and
write a new PPM file to stdout. One good choice
for a filter would be:
webcollage-root -filter 'vidwhacker -stdin -stdout'
-filter2 command
Filter the composite image through this command.
The -filter option applies to the sub-images; the
-filter2 applies to the final, full-screen image.
-http-proxy host:port
If you must go through a proxy to connect to the
web, you can specify it with this option, or with
the $http_proxy or $HTTP_PROXY environment vari
ables.
ENVIRONMENT
DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
XENVIRONMENT
to get the name of a resource file that overrides
the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MAN
AGER property.
http_proxy or HTTP_PROXY
to get the default HTTP proxy host and port.
FILES AND URLS
/usr/dict/words or /usr/share/lib/dict/words or
/usr/share/dict/words
To find the random words to feed to search engines.
http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl,
http://image.altavista.com/ To find random web pages.
BUGS
When drawing on the root window, it always uses the
default colormap. This is actually a limitation of xv.
But regardless, when using this program with xscreensaver,
it must be given the default-n visual specification (see
the xscreensaver(1) manual for more details.)
Only the GIF and JPEG image formats are supported.
Transparent and animating GIFs are not supported.
It's slow.
Too many of the images that it finds are text, not pic
tures. This is because most of the web is pictures of
text. Which is pretty sad.
SEE ALSOX(1), xscreensaver(1), xli(1), xv(1), xloadimage(1), ppm
make(1), giftopnm(1), pnmpaste(1), pnmscale(1), djpeg(1),
cjpeg(1), xdpyinfo(1), perl(1), vidwhacker(1), dadadodo(1)COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1998, 1999 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to
use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and
its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted with
out fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear
in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this
permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No
representations are made about the suitability of this
software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without
express or implied warranty.
AUTHOR
Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 24-May-98.
X Version 11 17-Jun-99 XScreenSaver(1)
