1webcollage(6x) XScreenSaver manual webcollage(6x)
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6 webcollage - decorate the screen with random images from the web
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9 webcollage [-display host:display.screen] [-root] [-window-id id]
10 [-verbose] [-timeout secs] [-delay secs] [-background bg] [-no-output]
11 [-urls-only] [-imagemap filename-base] [-size WxH] [-opacity ratio]
12 [-filter command] [-filter2 command] [-http-proxy host[:port]] [-dic‐
13 tionary dictionary-file] [-driftnet [cmd]]
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16 The webcollage program pulls random image off of the World Wide Web and
17 scatters them on the root window. One satisfied customer described it
18 as "a nonstop pop culture brainbath." This program finds its images by
19 doing random web searches, and extracting images from the returned
20 pages.
21 webcollage is written in perl(1) and requires Perl 5.
23 It will be an order of magnitude faster if you also have the webcol‐
25 lage-helper program installed (a GDK/JPEG image compositor), but web‐
26 collage works without it as well.
27 webcollage can be used in conjunction with the driftnet(1) program (the
29 Unix equivalent of EtherPEG) to snoop images from traffic on your local
30 subnet, instead of getting images from search engines.
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33 webcollage accepts the following options:
34 -root Draw on the root window. This option is mandatory, if output
36 is being produced: drawing to a window other than the root win‐
37 dow is not yet supported.
38 Images are placed on the root window by using one of the
40 xscreensaver-getimage(1), chbg(1), xv(1), xli(1), or xloadim‐
41 age(1) programs (whichever is available.)
42 -window-id id
44 Draw to the indicated window instead; this only works if the
45 xscreensaver-getimage(1) program is installed.
46 -verbose or -v
48 Print diagnostics to stderr. Multiple -v switches increase the
49 amount of output. -v will print out the URLs of the images,
50 and where they were placed; -vv will print out any warnings,
51 and all URLs being loaded; -vvv will print information on what
52 URLs were rejected; and so on.
53 -timeout seconds
55 How long to wait for a URL to complete before giving up on it
56 and moving on to the next one. Default 30 seconds.
57 -delay seconds
59 How long to sleep between images. Default 2 seconds. (Remem‐
60 ber that this program probably spends a lot of time waiting for
61 the network.)
62 -background color-or-ppm
64 What to use for the background onto which images are pasted.
65 This may be a color name, a hexadecimal RGB specification in
66 the form '#rrggbb', or the name of a PPM file.
67 -size WxH
69 Normally, the output image will be made to be the size of the
70 screen (or target window.) This lets you specify the desired
71 size.
72 -opacity ratio
74 How transparently to paste the images together, with 0.0 mean‐
75 ing "completely transparent" and 1.0 meaning "opaque." Default
76 0.85. A value of around 0.3 will produce an interestingly
77 blurry image after a while.
78 -no-output
80 If this option is specified, then no composite output image
81 will be generated. This is only useful when used in conjunc‐
82 tion with -verbose.
83 -urls-only
85 If this option is specified, then no composite output image
86 will be generated: instead, a list of image URLs will be
87 printed on stdout.
88 -imagemap filename-base
90 If this option is specified, then instead of writing an image
91 to the root window, two files will be created: "base.html" and
92 "base.jpg". The JPEG will be the collage; the HTML file will
93 include that image, and an image-map making the sub-images be
94 linked to the pages on which they were found (just like
95 http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/.)
96 -filter command
98 Filter all source images through this command. The command
99 must take a PPM file on stdin, and write a new PPM file to std‐
100 out. One good choice for a filter would be:
101 webcollage -root -filter 'vidwhacker -stdin -stdout'
102 -filter2 command
104 Filter the composite image through this command. The -filter
105 option applies to the sub-images; the -filter2 applies to the
106 final, full-screen image.
107 -http-proxy host:port
109 If you must go through a proxy to connect to the web, you can
110 specify it with this option, or with the $http_proxy or
111 $HTTP_PROXY environment variables.
112 -dictionary file
114 Webcollage normally looks at the system's default spell-check
115 dictionary to generate words to feed into the search engines.
116 You can specify an alternate dictionary with this option.
117 Note that by default, webcollage searches for images using sev‐
119 eral different methods, not all of which involve dictionary
120 words, so using a "topical" dictionary file will not, in
121 itself, be as effective as you might be hoping.
122 -driftnet [ args ]
124 driftnet(1) is a program that snoops your local ethernet for
125 packets that look like they might be image files. It can be
126 used in conjunction with webcollage to generate a collage of
127 what other people on your network are looking at, instead of a
128 search-engine collage. If you have driftnet installed on your
129 $PATH, just use the -driftnet option. You can also specify the
130 location of the program like this:
131 -driftnet /path/to/driftnet
132 or, you can provide extra arguments like this:
133 -driftnet '/path/to/driftnet -extra -args'
134 Driftnet version 0.1.5 or later is required. Note that the
135 driftnet program requires root access, so you'll have to make
136 driftnet be setuid-root for this to work. Please exercise cau‐
137 tion.
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140 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
141 XENVIRONMENT
143 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
144 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
145 http_proxy or HTTP_PROXY
147 to get the default HTTP proxy host and port.
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150 /usr/dict/words, /usr/share/lib/dict/words, or /usr/share/dict/words to
151 find the random words to feed to certain search engines.
152 http://www.altavista.com/image/randomlink,
154 http://random.yahoo.com/fast/ryl,
155 http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest-img.bml, and
156 http://www.google.com/ to find random web pages.
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159 The Internet being what it is, absolutely anything might show up in the
160 collage including -- quite possibly -- pornography, or even nudity.
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163 Animating GIFs are not supported: only the first frame will be used.
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166 The latest version of webcollage can be found as a part of xscreen‐
167 saver, at http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/, or on the WebCollage page
168 at http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/.
169 DriftNet: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/
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173 X(1), xscreensaver(1), xli(1), xv(1), xloadimage(1), ppmmake(1),
174 giftopnm(1), pnmpaste(1), pnmscale(1), djpeg(1), cjpeg(1), xdpyinfo(1),
175 perl(1), vidwhacker(6x), dadadodo(1), driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek
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178 Copyright © 1998-2005 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, mod‐
179 ify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any
180 purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copy‐
181 right notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice
182 and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No rep‐
183 resentations are made about the suitability of this software for any
184 purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
185
187 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 24-May-1998.
188X Version 11 5.05-3 (06-Apr-2008) webcollage(6x)