webcollage
XScreenSaver(1) XScreenSaver(1)
NAME
webcollage - decorate the screen with random images from the web
SYNOPSIS
webcollage [-display host:display.screen] [-root] [-verbose] [-timeout
secs] [-delay secs] [-background bg] [-no-output] [-urls-only] [-size
WxH] [-filter command] [-filter2 command] [-http-proxy host[:port]]
[-dictionary dictionary-file] [-driftnet [cmd]]
DESCRIPTION
The webcollage program pulls random image off of the World Wide Web and
scatters them on the root window. One satisfied 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 xloadimage(1) tools.
webcollage is written in perl(1) and requires Perl 5.
It will be an order of magnitude faster if you also have the webcol-
lage-helper program installed (a GDK/JPEG image compositor), but web-
collage works without it as well.
OPTIONS
webcollage accepts the following options:
-root Draw on the root window. This option is manditory, if output
is being produced: 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 the URLs of the images,
and where they were placed; -vv will print out any warnings,
and all URLs being loaded; -vvv will print information on what
URLs were rejected; and so on.
-timeout seconds
How long to wait for a URL to complete before giving up on it
and moving on to the next one. Default 30 seconds.
-delay seconds
How long to sleep between images. Default 2 seconds. (Remem-
ber 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 hexadecimal RGB specification in
the form '#rrggbb', or the name of a PPM file.
-size WxH
Normally, the output image will be made to be the size of the
screen. This lets you specify the desired size.
-no-output
If this option is specified, then no composite output image
will be generated. This is only useful when used in conjunc-
tion with -verbose.
-urls-only
If this option is specified, then no composite output image
will be generated: instead, a list of image URLs will be
printed on stdout.
-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 std-
out. 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 variables.
-dictionary file
Webcollage normally looks at the system's default spell-check
dictionary to generate words to feed into the search engines.
You can specify an alternate dictionary with this option.
-driftnet [ args ]
driftnet(1) is a program that snoops your local ethernet for
packets that look like they might be image files. It can be
used in conjunction with webcollage to generate a collage of
what other people on your network are looking at, instead of a
search-engine collage. If you have driftnet installed on your
$PATH, just use the -driftnet option. You can also specify the
location of the program like this:
-driftnet /path/to/driftnet
or, you can provide extra arguments like this:
-driftnet '/path/to/driftnet -extra -args'
Driftnet version 0.1.5 or later is required. Note that the
driftnet program requires root access, so you'll have to make
driftnet be setuid-root for this to work. Please exercise cau-
tion.
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_MANAGER 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 speci-
fication (see the xscreensaver(1) manual for more details.)
Animating GIFs are not supported.
Too many of the images that it finds are text, not pictures. This is
because most of the web is pictures of text. Which is pretty sad.
SEE ALSO
X(1), xscreensaver(1), xli(1), xv(1), xloadimage(1), ppmmake(1),
giftopnm(1), pnmpaste(1), pnmscale(1), djpeg(1), cjpeg(1), xdpyinfo(1),
perl(1), vidwhacker(1), dadadodo(1), driftnet(1)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1998-2002 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy,
modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for
any purpose is hereby granted without 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 war-
ranty.
AUTHOR
Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 24-May-98.
X Version 11 17-Jun-99 XScreenSaver(1)
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