NAME¶
xscreensaver-demo - interactively control the background xscreensaver daemon
SYNOPSIS¶
xscreensaver-demo [-display
host:display.screen] [-prefs]
[--debug]
DESCRIPTION¶
The
xscreensaver-demo program is a graphical front-end for setting the
parameters used by the background
xscreensaver(1) daemon. It is
essentially two things: a tool for editing the
~/.xscreensaver file;
and a tool for demoing the various graphics hacks that the
xscreensaver
daemon will launch.
The main window consists of a menu bar and two tabbed pages. The first page is
for editing the list of demos, and the second is for editing various other
parameters of the screensaver.
MENU COMMANDS¶
All of these commands are on either the
File or
Help menus:
- Blank Screen Now
- Activates the background xscreensaver daemon, which
will then run a demo at random. This is the same as running
xscreensaver-command(1) with the -activate option.
- Lock Screen Now
- Just like Blank Screen Now, except the screen will
be locked as well (even if it is not configured to lock all the time.)
This is the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the
-lock option.
- Kill Daemon
- If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill
it. This is the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the
-exit option.
- Restart Daemon
- If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill
it. Then launch it again. This is the same as doing ``
xscreensaver-command -exit'' followed by `` xscreensaver''.
Note that it is not the same as doing `` xscreensaver-command
-restart''.
- Exit
- Exits the xscreensaver-demo program (this program)
without affecting the background xscreensaver daemon, if any.
- About...
- Displays the version number of this program,
xscreensaver-demo.
- Documentation...
- Opens up a web browser looking at the XScreenSaver web
page, where you can find online copies of the xscreensaver(1),
xscreensaver-demo(1), and xscreensaver-command(1)
manuals.
DISPLAY MODES TAB¶
This page contains a list of the names of the various display modes, a preview
area, and some fields that let you configure screen saver behavior.
- Mode
- This option menu controls the activation behavior of the
screen saver. The options are:
- Disable Screen Saver
- Don't ever blank the screen, and don't ever allow the
monitor to power down.
- Blank Screen Only
- When blanking the screen, just go black: don't run any
graphics.
- Only One Screen Saver
- When blanking the screen, only ever use one particular
display mode (the one selected in the list.)
- Random Screen Saver
- When blanking the screen, select a random display mode from
among those that are enabled and applicable. If there are multiple
monitors connected, run a different display mode on each one. This is the
default.
- Random Same Saver
- This is just like Random Screen Saver, except that
the same randomly-chosen display mode will be run on all monitors,
instead of different ones on each.
- Demo List
- Double-clicking in the list on the left will let you try
out the indicated demo. The screen will go black, and the program will run
in full-screen mode, just as it would if the xscreensaver daemon
had launched it. Clicking the mouse again will stop the demo and un-blank
the screen.
Single-clicking in the list will run it in the small preview pane on the
right. (But beware: many of the display modes behave somewhat differently
when running in full-screen mode, so the scaled-down view might not give
an accurate impression.)
When Mode is set to Random Screen Saver, each name in the list
has a checkbox next to it: this controls whether this display mode is
enabled. If it is unchecked, then that mode will not be chosen. (Though
you can still run it explicitly by double-clicking on its name.)
- Arrow Buttons
- Beneath the list are a pair of up and down arrows. Clicking
on the down arrow will select the next item in the list, and then run it
in full-screen mode, just as if you had double-clicked on it. The up arrow
goes the other way. This is just a shortcut for trying out all of the
display modes in turn.
- Blank After
- After the user has been idle this long, the
xscreensaver daemon will blank the screen.
- Cycle After
- After the screensaver has been running for this long, the
currently running graphics demo will be killed, and a new one started. If
this is 0, then the graphics demo will never be changed: only one demo
will run until the screensaver is deactivated by user activity.
- Lock Screen
- When this is checked, the screen will be locked when it
activates.
- Lock Screen After
- This controls the length of the ``grace period'' between
when the screensaver activates, and when the screen becomes locked. For
example, if this is 5 minutes, and Blank After is 10 minutes, then
after 10 minutes, the screen would blank. If there was user activity at 12
minutes, no password would be required to un-blank the screen. But, if
there was user activity at 15 minutes or later (that is, Lock Screen
After minutes after activation) then a password would be required. The
default is 0, meaning that if locking is enabled, then a password will be
required as soon as the screen blanks.
- Preview
- This button, below the small preview window, runs the demo
in full-screen mode so that you can try it out. This is the same thing
that happens when you double-click an element in the list. Click the mouse
to dismiss the full-screen preview.
- Settings
- This button will pop up a dialog where you can configure
settings specific to the display mode selected in the list.
SETTINGS DIALOG¶
When you click on the
Settings button on the
Display Modes tab, a
configuration dialog will pop up that lets you customize settings of the
selected display mode. Each display mode has its own custom configuration
controls on the left side.
On the right side is a paragraph or two describing the display mode. Below that
is a
Documentation button that will display the display mode's manual
page, if it has one, in a new window (since each of the display modes is
actually a separate program, they each have their own manual.)
The
Advanced button reconfigures the dialog box so that you can edit the
display mode's command line directly, instead of using the graphical controls.
ADVANCED TAB¶
This tab lets you change various settings used by the xscreensaver daemon
itself, as well as some global options shared by all of the display modes.
Image Manipulation
Some of the graphics hacks manipulate images. These settings control where those
source images come from. (All of these options work by invoking the
xscreensaver-getimage(1) program, which is what actually does the
work.)
- Grab Desktop Images
- If this option is selected, then they are allowed to
manipulate the desktop image, that is, a display mode might draw a picture
of your desktop melting, or being distorted in some way. The
security-paranoid might want to disable this option, because if it is set,
it means that the windows on your desktop will occasionally be visible
while your screen is locked. Others will not be able to do
anything, but they may be able to see whatever you left on your
screen.
- Grab Video Frames
- If your system has a video capture card, selecting this
option will allow the image-manipulating modes to capture a frame of video
to operate on.
- Choose Random Image
- If this option is set, then the image-manipulating modes
will select a random image file to operate on, from the specified source.
That source may be a local directory, which will be recursively searched
for images. Or, it may be the URL of an RSS or Atom feed (e.g., a Flickr
gallery), in which case a random image from that feed will be selected
instead. The contents of the feed will be cached locally and refreshed
periodically as needed.
If more than one of the above image-related options are selected, then one will
be chosen at random. If none of them are selected, then an image of video
colorbars will be used instead.
Text Manipulation
Some of the display modes display and manipulate text. The following options
control how that text is generated. (These parameters control the behavior of
the
xscreensaver-text(1) program, which is what actually does the
work.)
- Host Name and Time
- If this checkbox is selected, then the text used by the
screen savers will be the local host name, OS version, date, time, and
system load.
- Text
- If this checkbox is selected, then the literal text typed
in the field to its right will be used. If it contains % escape sequences,
they will be expanded as per strftime(2).
- Text File
- If this checkbox is selected, then the contents of the
corresponding file will be displayed.
- Program
- If this checkbox is selected, then the given program will
be run, repeatedly, and its output will be displayed.
- URL
- If this checkbox is selected, then the given HTTP URL will
be downloaded and displayed repeatedly. If the document contains HTML,
RSS, or Atom, it will be converted to plain-text first.
Note: this re-downloads the document every time the screen saver runs out of
text, so it will probably be hitting that web server multiple times a
minute. Be careful that the owner of that server doesn't consider that to
be abusive.
Power Management Settings
These settings control whether, and when, your monitor powers down.
- Power Management Enabled
- Whether the monitor should be powered down after a period
of inactivity.
If this option is grayed out, it means your X server does not support the
XDPMS extension, and so control over the monitor's power state is not
available.
If you're using a laptop, don't be surprised if this has no effect: many
laptops have monitor power-saving behavior built in at a very low level
that is invisible to Unix and X. On such systems, you can typically only
adjust the power-saving delays by changing settings in the BIOS in some
hardware-specific way.
- Standby After
- If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor
will go black after this much idle time. (Graphics demos will stop
running, also.)
- Suspend After
- If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor
will go into power-saving mode after this much idle time. This duration
should be greater than or equal to Standby.
- Off After
- If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor
will fully power down after this much idle time. This duration should be
greater than or equal to Suspend.
- Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode
- If the display mode is set to Blank Screen Only and
this is checked, then the monitor will be powered off immediately upon
blanking, regardless of the other power-management settings. In this way,
the power management idle-timers can be completely disabled, but the
screen will be powered off when black. (This might be preferable on
laptops.)
Fading and Colormaps
These options control how the screen fades to or from black when a screen saver
begins or ends.
- Fade To Black When Blanking
- If selected, then when the screensaver activates, the
current contents of the screen will fade to black instead of simply
winking out. (Note: this doesn't work with all X servers.) A fade will
also be done when switching graphics hacks (when the Cycle After
expires.)
- Unfade From Black When Unblanking
- The complement to Fade Colormap: if selected, then
when the screensaver deactivates, the original contents of the screen will
fade in from black instead of appearing immediately. This is only done if
Fade Colormap is also selected.
- Fade Duration
- When fading or unfading are selected, this controls how
long the fade will take.
- Install Colormap
- On 8-bit screens, whether to install a private colormap
while the screensaver is active, so that the graphics hacks can get as
many colors as possible. This does nothing if you are running in 16-bit or
better.
There are more settings than these available, but these are the most commonly
used ones; see the manual for
xscreensaver(1) for other parameters that
can be set by editing the
~/.xscreensaver file, or the X resource
database.
COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS¶
xscreensaver-demo accepts the following command line options.
- -display host:display.screen
- The X display to use. The xscreensaver-demo program
will open its window on that display, and also control the
xscreensaver daemon that is managing that same display.
- -prefs
- Start up with the Advanced tab selected by default
instead of the Display Modes tab.
- -debug
- Causes lots of diagnostics to be printed on stderr.
It is important that the
xscreensaver and
xscreensaver-demo
processes be running on the same machine, or at least, on two machines that
share a file system. When
xscreensaver-demo writes a new version of the
~/.xscreensaver file, it's important that the
xscreensaver see
that same file. If the two processes are seeing different
~/.xscreensaver files, things will malfunction.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- DISPLAY
- to get the default host and display number.
- PATH
- to find the sub-programs to run. However, note that the
sub-programs are actually launched by the xscreensaver daemon, not
by xscreensaver-demo itself. So, what matters is what $PATH
that the xscreensaver program sees.
- HOME
- for the directory in which to read and write the
.xscreensaver file.
- 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.
UPGRADES¶
The latest version of xscreensaver, an online version of this manual, and a FAQ
can always be found at
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
SEE ALSO¶
X(1),
xscreensaver(1),
xscreensaver-command(1),
xscreensaver-getimage(1),
xscreensaver-text(1)
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright © 1992-2011 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 warranty.
AUTHOR¶
Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 13-aug-92.
Please let me know if you find any bugs or make any improvements.
