xscreensaver(1)

NAME

webcollage - decorate the screen with random images from
the web

SYNOPSIS

webcollage [-display host:display.screen]  [-root]  [-ver
bose] [-timeout secs] [-delay secs] [-background bg] [-nooutput] [-urls-only] [-size WxH] [-filter command]  [-fil
ter2  command] [-http-proxy host[:port]] [-dictionary dic_
tionary-file] [-driftnet [cmd]]

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.

It will be an order of magnitude faster if you also have
the webcollage-helper program installed (a GDK/JPEG image compositor), but webcollage works without it as well.

webcollage can be used in conjunction with the driftnet(1) program (the Unix equivalent of EtherPEG) to snoop images
from traffic on your local subnet, instead of getting
images from search engines.

OPTIONS

webcollage accepts the following options:

-root Draw on the root window. This option is mandi: tory, if output is being produced: drawing to a
window other than the root window is not yet sup
ported.
-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 giv
ing up on it and moving on to the next one.
Default 30 seconds.
-delay seconds: How long to sleep between images. Default 2 sec
onds. (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.
-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 use
ful when used in conjunction 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 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.
-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 caution.

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, /usr/share/lib/dict/words, or /usr/share/dict/words to find the random words to feed to search engines.

http://image.altavista.com/, http://images.google.com/, http://news.yahoo.com/ http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl, and http://lycospro.lycos.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.)

Animating GIFs are not supported: only the first frame
will be used.

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.

UPGRADES

The latest version of webcollage can be found as a part of
xscreensaver, at http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/, or on the WebCollage page at http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/.

DriftNet: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/

COPYRIGHT

Copyright � 1998-2002 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.

docs.sk

comprehensive documentation repository

In section

See also