webcollage - decorate the screen with random images from the web
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B webcollage
-[\-display \fIhost:display.screen\fP] [\-root] [\-verbose]
-[\-delay \fIsecs\fP] [\-timeout \fIsecs\fP] [\-background \fIbg\fP]
-[\-filter \fIcommand\fP] [\-filter2 \fIcommand\fP]
+[\-display \fIhost:display.screen\fP]
+[\-root]
+[\-window\-id \fIid\fP]
+[\-verbose]
+[\-timeout \fIsecs\fP]
+[\-delay \fIsecs\fP]
+[\-background \fIbg\fP]
+[\-no-output]
+[\-urls-only]
+[\-imagemap \fIfilename-base\fP]
+[\-size \fIWxH\fP]
+[\-opacity \fIratio\fP]
+[\-filter \fIcommand\fP]
+[\-filter2 \fIcommand\fP]
[\-http\-proxy host[:port]]
+[\-dictionary \fIdictionary-file\fP]
+[\-driftnet [\fIcmd\fP]]
+[\-directory \fIdir\fP]
+[\-fps]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fIwebcollage\fP 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
-.BR giftopnm (1),
-.BR djpeg (1),
-and
-.BR xli (1),
-.BR xv (1),
-or
-.BR xloadimage (1)
-tools.
\fIwebcollage\fP is written in
.BR perl (1)
and requires Perl 5.
+
+It will be an order of magnitude faster if you also have
+the \fIwebcollage-helper\fP program installed (a GDK/JPEG image
+compositor), but \fIwebcollage\fP works without it as well.
+
+\fIwebcollage\fP can be used in conjunction with the
+.BR driftnet (1)
+program (the Unix equivalent of EtherPEG) to snoop images from traffic
+on your local subnet, instead of getting images from search engines.
.SH OPTIONS
.I webcollage
accepts the following options:
.TP 8
.B \-root
-Draw on the root window. This option is manditory: drawing to a window
-other than the root window is not yet supported.
+Draw on the root window. This option is mandatory, if output is being
+produced: drawing to a window other than the root window is not yet
+supported.
+
+Images are placed on the root window by using one of the
+.BR xscreensaver-getimage (1),
+.BR chbg (1),
+.BR xv (1),
+.BR xli (1),
+or
+.BR xloadimage (1)
+programs (whichever is available.)
+.TP 8
+.B \-window\-id \fIid\fP
+Draw to the indicated window instead; this only works if the
+.BR xscreensaver-getimage (1)
+program is installed.
.TP 8
.B \-verbose \fRor\fP \-v
Print diagnostics to stderr. Multiple \fI-v\fP switches increase the
-amount of output. \fI-v\fP will print out only the URLs of the
-images; \fI-vv\fP will print all the commands being run; and \fI-vvv\fP
-will print more than you care about.
+amount of output. \fI-v\fP will print out the URLs of the images,
+and where they were placed; \fI-vv\fP will print out any warnings,
+and all URLs being loaded; \fI-vvv\fP will print information on
+what URLs were rejected; and so on.
+.TP 8
+.B \-timeout \fIseconds\fP
+How long to wait for a URL to complete before giving up on it and
+moving on to the next one.
+Default 30 seconds.
.TP 8
.B \-delay \fIseconds\fP
-How long to sleep between images. Default 1 second. (Remember that
+How long to sleep between images. Default 2 seconds. (Remember that
this program probably spends a lot of time waiting for the network.)
.TP 8
.B \-background \fIcolor-or-ppm\fP
a color name, a hexadecimal RGB specification in the form '#rrggbb', or
the name of a PPM file.
.TP 8
-.B \-timeout \fIseconds\fP
-How long to wait for a URL to complete before giving up on it and
-moving on to the next one.
-Default 30 seconds.
+.B \-size \fIWxH\fP
+Normally, the output image will be made to be the size of the
+screen (or target window.) This lets you specify the desired size.
+.TP 8
+.B \-opacity \fIratio\fP
+How transparently to paste the images together, with 0.0 meaning
+"completely transparent" and 1.0 meaning "opaque." Default 0.85.
+A value of around 0.3 will produce an interestingly blurry image
+after a while.
+.TP 8
+.B \-no-output
+If this option is specified, then no composite output image will be
+generated. This is only useful when used in conjunction
+with \fB\-verbose\fP.
+.TP 8
+.B \-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.
+.TP 8
+.B \-imagemap \fIfilename-base\fP
+If this option is specified, then instead of writing an image to the
+root window, two files will be created: "\fIbase\fP.html" and "\fIbase\fP.jpg".
+The JPEG will be the collage; the HTML file will include that image, and
+an image-map making the sub-images be linked to the pages on which they
+were found (just like \fIhttps://www.jwz.org/webcollage/\fP.)
.TP 8
.B \-filter \fIcommand\fP
Filter all source images through this command. The command must take
If you must go through a proxy to connect to the web, you can specify it
with this option, or with the \fB$http_proxy\fP or \fB$HTTP_PROXY\fP
environment variables.
+.TP 8
+.B \-dictionary \fIfile\fP
+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.
+
+Note that by default, webcollage searches for images using several
+different methods, not all of which involve dictionary words, so
+using a "topical" dictionary file will not, in itself, be as effective
+as you might be hoping.
+.TP 8
+.B \-driftnet \fI[ args ]\fP
+.BR 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 \fIwebcollage\fP to generate a collage of what other people on
+your network are looking at, instead of a search-engine collage.
+If you have \fIdriftnet\fP installed on your $PATH, just use
+the \fI\-driftnet\fP option. You can also specify the location
+of the program like this:
+.EX
+-driftnet /path/to/driftnet
+.EE
+or, you can provide extra arguments like this:
+.EX
+-driftnet '/path/to/driftnet -extra -args'
+.EE
+Driftnet version 0.1.5 or later is required. Note that
+the \fIdriftnet\fP program requires root access, so you'll have
+to make \fIdriftnet\fP be setuid-root for this to work.
+Please exercise caution.
+.TP 8
+.B \-directory \fIdir\fP
+Instead of searching the web for images, use the contents of
+the given directory.
+.TP 8
+.B \-fps
+Display the current frame rate and CPU load (MacOS only).
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.PP
.TP 8
.B http_proxy\fR or \fPHTTP_PROXY
to get the default HTTP proxy host and port.
.SH FILES AND URLS
-.TP
-.I /usr/dict/words \fRor\fP /usr/share/lib/dict/words
-To find the random words to feed to search engines.
-.PP
-.I http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl, http://image.altavista.com/
-To find random web pages.
-.SH 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 \fBdefault-n\fP
-visual specification (see the
-.BR xscreensaver (1)
-manual for more details.)
-
-Only the GIF and JPEG image formats are supported.
-
-Transparent and animating GIFs are not supported.
+.I /usr/dict/words,
+.I /usr/share/lib/dict/words,\fP
+or
+.I /usr/share/dict/words
+to find the random words to feed to certain search engines.
-It's slow.
+ \fIhttp://www.altavista.com/image/randomlink\fP,
+ \fIhttp://random.yahoo.com/fast/ryl\fP,
+ \fIhttp://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest-img.bml\fP, and
+ \fIhttp://www.google.com/\fP
+to find random web pages.
+.SH BOOBIES
+The Internet being what it is, absolutely anything might show up in the
+collage including -- quite possibly -- pornography, or even nudity.
+.SH BUGS
+Animating GIFs are not supported: only the first frame will be used.
+.SH UPGRADES
+The latest version of webcollage can be found as a part of
+xscreensaver, at
+.B https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/,
+or on the WebCollage page at
+.B https://www.jwz.org/webcollage/.
-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.
+DriftNet:
+.B http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/driftnet/
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR X (1),
.BR xscreensaver (1),
.BR cjpeg (1),
.BR xdpyinfo (1),
.BR perl (1),
-.BR vidwhacker (1),
-.BR dadadodo (1)
+.BR vidwhacker (MANSUFFIX),
+.BR dadadodo (1),
+.BR driftnet (1)
+.BR EtherPEG ,
+.BR EtherPeek
.SH COPYRIGHT
-Copyright \(co 1998, 1999 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
+Copyright \(co 1998-2005 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
+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.
.SH AUTHOR
-Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 24-May-98.
+Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 24-May-1998.
projects / xscreensaver / blobdiff