1xscreensaver-demo(1) XScreenSaver manual xscreensaver-demo(1)
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6 xscreensaver-demo - interactively control the background xscreensaver
7 daemon
8
10 xscreensaver-demo [-display host:display.screen] [-prefs] [--debug]
11
13 The xscreensaver-demo program is a graphical front-end for setting the
14 parameters used by the background xscreensaver(1) daemon. It is essen‐
15 tially two things: a tool for editing the ~/.xscreensaver file; and a
16 tool for demoing the various graphics hacks that the xscreensaver dae‐
17 mon will launch.
18 The main window consists of a menu bar and two tabbed pages. The first
20 page is for editing the list of demos, and the second is for editing
21 various other parameters of the screensaver.
22
24 All of these commands are on either the File or Help menus:
25 Blank Screen Now
27 Activates the background xscreensaver daemon, which will then run a
28 demo at random. This is the same as running xscreensaver-com‐
29 mand(1) with the -activate option.
30 Lock Screen Now
32 Just like Blank Screen Now, except the screen will be locked as
33 well (even if it is not configured to lock all the time.) This is
34 the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the -lock option.
35 Kill Daemon
37 If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill it.
38 This is the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the -exit
39 option.
40 Restart Daemon
42 If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill it.
43 Then launch it again. This is the same as doing ``xscreensaver-
44 command -exit'' followed by ``xscreensaver''.
45 Note that it is not the same as doing ``xscreensaver-command
47 -restart''.
48 Exit
50 Exits the xscreensaver-demo program (this program) without affect‐
51 ing the background xscreensaver daemon, if any.
52 About...
54 Displays the version number of this program, xscreensaver-demo.
55 Documentation...
57 Opens up a web browser looking at the XScreenSaver web page, where
58 you can find online copies of the xscreensaver(1), xscreen‐
59 saver-demo(1), and xscreensaver-command(1) manuals.
60
62 This page contains a list of the names of the various display modes, a
63 preview area, and some fields that let you configure screen saver
64 behavior.
65 Mode
67 This option menu controls the activation behavior of the screen
68 saver. The options are:
69 Disable Screen Saver
71 Don't ever blank the screen, and don't ever allow the monitor
72 to power down.
73 Blank Screen Only
75 When blanking the screen, just go black: don't run any graph‐
76 ics.
77 Only One Screen Saver
79 When blanking the screen, only ever use one particular display
80 mode (the one selected in the list.)
81 Random Screen Saver
83 When blanking the screen, select a random display mode from
84 among those that are enabled and applicable. If there are mul‐
85 tiple monitors connected, run a different display mode on each
86 one. This is the default.
87 Random Same Saver
89 This is just like Random Screen Saver, except that the same
90 randomly-chosen display mode will be run on all monitors,
91 instead of different ones on each.
92 Demo List
94 Double-clicking in the list on the left will let you try out the
95 indicated demo. The screen will go black, and the program will run
96 in full-screen mode, just as it would if the xscreensaver daemon
97 had launched it. Clicking the mouse again will stop the demo and
98 un-blank the screen.
99 Single-clicking in the list will run it in the small preview pane
101 on the right. (But beware: many of the display modes behave some‐
102 what differently when running in full-screen mode, so the scaled-
103 down view might not give an accurate impression.)
104 When Mode is set to Random Screen Saver, each name in the list has
106 a checkbox next to it: this controls whether this display mode is
107 enabled. If it is unchecked, then that mode will not be chosen.
108 (Though you can still run it explicitly by double-clicking on its
109 name.)
110 Arrow Buttons
112 Beneath the list are a pair of up and down arrows. Clicking on the
113 down arrow will select the next item in the list, and then run it
114 in full-screen mode, just as if you had double-clicked on it. The
115 up arrow goes the other way. This is just a shortcut for trying
116 out all of the display modes in turn.
117 Blank After
119 After the user has been idle this long, the xscreensaver daemon
120 will blank the screen.
121 Cycle After
123 After the screensaver has been running for this long, the currently
124 running graphics demo will be killed, and a new one started. If
125 this is 0, then the graphics demo will never be changed: only one
126 demo will run until the screensaver is deactivated by user activ‐
127 ity.
128 Lock Screen
130 When this is checked, the screen will be locked when it activates.
131 Lock Screen After
133 This controls the length of the ``grace period'' between when the
134 screensaver activates, and when the screen becomes locked. For
135 example, if this is 5 minutes, and Blank After is 10 minutes, then
136 after 10 minutes, the screen would blank. If there was user activ‐
137 ity at 12 minutes, no password would be required to un-blank the
138 screen. But, if there was user activity at 15 minutes or later
139 (that is, Lock Screen After minutes after activation) then a pass‐
140 word would be required. The default is 0, meaning that if locking
141 is enabled, then a password will be required as soon as the screen
142 blanks.
143 Preview
145 This button, below the small preview window, runs the demo in full-
146 screen mode so that you can try it out. This is the same thing
147 that happens when you double-click an element in the list. Click
148 the mouse to dismiss the full-screen preview.
149 Settings
151 This button will pop up a dialog where you can configure settings
152 specific to the display mode selected in the list.
153
155 When you click on the Settings button on the Display Modes tab, a con‐
156 figuration dialog will pop up that lets you customize settings of the
157 selected display mode. Each display mode has its own custom configura‐
158 tion controls on the left side.
159 On the right side is a paragraph or two describing the display mode.
161 Below that is a Documentation button that will display the display
162 mode's manual page, if it has one, in a new window (since each of the
163 display modes is actually a separate program, they each have their own
164 manual.)
165 The Advanced button reconfigures the dialog box so that you can edit
167 the display mode's command line directly, instead of using the graphi‐
168 cal controls.
169
171 This tab lets you change various settings used by the xscreensaver dae‐
172 mon itself, as well as some global options shared by all of the display
173 modes.
174 Image Manipulation
176 Some of the graphics hacks manipulate images. These settings control
178 where those source images come from. (All of these options work by
179 invoking the xscreensaver-getimage(1) program, which is what actually
180 does the work.)
181 Grab Desktop Images
183 If this option is selected, then they are allowed to manipulate
184 the desktop image, that is, a display mode might draw a picture
185 of your desktop melting, or being distorted in some way. The
186 security-paranoid might want to disable this option, because if
187 it is set, it means that the windows on your desktop will occa‐
188 sionally be visible while your screen is locked. Others will
189 not be able to do anything, but they may be able to see what‐
190 ever you left on your screen.
191 Grab Video Frames
193 If your system has a video capture card, selecting this option
194 will allow the image-manipulating modes to capture a frame of
195 video to operate on.
196 Choose Random Image
198 If this option is set, then the image-manipulating modes will
199 select a random image file to operate on, from the specified
200 source. That source may be a local directory, which will be
201 recursively searched for images. Or, it may be the URL of an
202 RSS or Atom feed (e.g., a Flickr gallery), in which case a ran‐
203 dom image from that feed will be selected instead. The con‐
204 tents of the feed will be cached locally and refreshed periodi‐
205 cally as needed.
206 If more than one of the above image-related options are selected,
208 then one will be chosen at random. If none of them are selected,
209 then an image of video colorbars will be used instead.
210 Text Manipulation
212 Some of the display modes display and manipulate text. The following
214 options control how that text is generated. (These parameters control
215 the behavior of the xscreensaver-text(1) program, which is what actu‐
216 ally does the work.)
217 Host Name and Time
219 If this checkbox is selected, then the text used by the screen
220 savers will be the local host name, OS version, date, time, and
221 system load.
222 Text
224 If this checkbox is selected, then the literal text typed in
225 the field to its right will be used. If it contains % escape
226 sequences, they will be expanded as per strftime(2).
227 Text File
229 If this checkbox is selected, then the contents of the corre‐
230 sponding file will be displayed.
231 Program
233 If this checkbox is selected, then the given program will be
234 run, repeatedly, and its output will be displayed.
235 URL If this checkbox is selected, then the given HTTP URL will be
237 downloaded and displayed repeatedly. If the document contains
238 HTML, RSS, or Atom, it will be converted to plain-text first.
239 Note: this re-downloads the document every time the screen
241 saver runs out of text, so it will probably be hitting that web
242 server multiple times a minute. Be careful that the owner of
243 that server doesn't consider that to be abusive.
244 Power Management Settings
246 These settings control whether, and when, your monitor powers down.
248 Power Management Enabled
250 Whether the monitor should be powered down after a period of
251 inactivity.
252 If this option is grayed out, it means your X server does not
254 support the XDPMS extension, and so control over the monitor's
255 power state is not available.
256 If you're using a laptop, don't be surprised if this has no
258 effect: many laptops have monitor power-saving behavior built
259 in at a very low level that is invisible to Unix and X. On
260 such systems, you can typically only adjust the power-saving
261 delays by changing settings in the BIOS in some hardware-spe‐
262 cific way.
263 Standby After
265 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will go
266 black after this much idle time. (Graphics demos will stop
267 running, also.)
268 Suspend After
270 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will go
271 into power-saving mode after this much idle time. This dura‐
272 tion should be greater than or equal to Standby.
273 Off After
275 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will fully
276 power down after this much idle time. This duration should be
277 greater than or equal to Suspend.
278 Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode
280 If the display mode is set to Blank Screen Only and this is
281 checked, then the monitor will be powered off immediately upon
282 blanking, regardless of the other power-management settings.
283 In this way, the power management idle-timers can be completely
284 disabled, but the screen will be powered off when black. (This
285 might be preferable on laptops.)
286 Fading and Colormaps
288 These options control how the screen fades to or from black when a
290 screen saver begins or ends.
291 Fade To Black When Blanking
293 If selected, then when the screensaver activates, the current
294 contents of the screen will fade to black instead of simply
295 winking out. (Note: this doesn't work with all X servers.) A
296 fade will also be done when switching graphics hacks (when the
297 Cycle After expires.)
298 Unfade From Black When Unblanking
300 The complement to Fade Colormap: if selected, then when the
301 screensaver deactivates, the original contents of the screen
302 will fade in from black instead of appearing immediately. This
303 is only done if Fade Colormap is also selected.
304 Fade Duration
306 When fading or unfading are selected, this controls how long
307 the fade will take.
308 Install Colormap
310 On 8-bit screens, whether to install a private colormap while
311 the screensaver is active, so that the graphics hacks can get
312 as many colors as possible. This does nothing if you are run‐
313 ning in 16-bit or better.
314 There are more settings than these available, but these are the most
316 commonly used ones; see the manual for xscreensaver(1) for other param‐
317 eters that can be set by editing the ~/.xscreensaver file, or the X
318 resource database.
319
321 xscreensaver-demo accepts the following command line options.
322 -display host:display.screen
324 The X display to use. The xscreensaver-demo program will open
325 its window on that display, and also control the xscreensaver
326 daemon that is managing that same display.
327 -prefs Start up with the Advanced tab selected by default instead of
329 the Display Modes tab.
330 -debug Causes lots of diagnostics to be printed on stderr.
332 It is important that the xscreensaver and xscreensaver-demo processes
334 be running on the same machine, or at least, on two machines that share
335 a file system. When xscreensaver-demo writes a new version of the
336 ~/.xscreensaver file, it's important that the xscreensaver see that
337 same file. If the two processes are seeing different ~/.xscreensaver
338 files, things will malfunction.
339
341 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
342 PATH to find the sub-programs to run. However, note that the sub-
344 programs are actually launched by the xscreensaver daemon, not
345 by xscreensaver-demo itself. So, what matters is what $PATH
346 that the xscreensaver program sees.
347 HOME for the directory in which to read and write the .xscreensaver
349 file.
350 XENVIRONMENT
352 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
353 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
354 HTTP_PROXY or http_proxy
356 to get the default HTTP proxy host and port.
357
359 The latest version of xscreensaver, an online version of this manual,
360 and a FAQ can always be found at http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
361
363 X(1), xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-command(1), xscreensaver-getim‐
364 age(1), xscreensaver-text(1)
365
367 Copyright © 1992-2011 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, mod‐
368 ify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any
369 purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copy‐
370 right notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice
371 and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No rep‐
372 resentations are made about the suitability of this software for any
373 purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
374
376 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 13-aug-92.
377 Please let me know if you find any bugs or make any improvements.
379X Version 11 5.15-3.fc14 (18-Oct-2011) xscreensaver-demo(1)