On Sat, Apr 01, 2017 at 11:43:04AM +0200, Tobias Stoeckmann wrote: > Hi misc@, > > during the last weeks, I have reviewed quite some image tools out there > because I needed one to set a wallpaper on my X server. I am not using > a sophisticated desktop environment, so there was a need for a > standalone tool. Let's keep it short: I have found and reported many > bugs, and had to stop eventually after accepting that these libraries > are either legacy/unmaintained or beyond repair (calling printf and free > in signal handlers, anyone?). > > To overcome this issue, I decided to write a simple utility, with the > common OpenBSD focuses: Simplicity, security, doing exactly one thing. > > The tool supports three file formats: > > - JPEG; virtually everyone uses it > - PNG; most popular lossless format > - XPM; well, it's the most common agreement on X installations out there > > I still want to be able to zoom into my pictures, so these modes of > operations are supported: > > - tile; tiles the image next to each other until screen/output is filled > - center; centers the image > - maximize; maximizes the image without cutting things off > - stretch; destroys aspect ratio and fills the whole screen/output > - zoom; maximizes the image and cuts things off, screen/output is filled > > To get nice results, xwallpaper directly uses pixman for pixel > operations. In case you don't know pixman: It is the direct foundation > for the xorg-server to do pixel operations. No further dependencies! > > Next to this, it avoids using the old (deprecated) X11 libraries. Found > bugs in them as well and also got repeatedly told that they are not > supposed to be used anymore either. So I decided to go with XCB. > > Multi monitor setups are too regular by today to completely ignore them > or using Xinerama with its weird numbering. Instead, it uses RandR if > available, which makes it pretty nice to use. It even supports different > modes (tiling, centering etc.) on different outputs! And if you are used > to run xrandr, the syntax will be very familiar. > > Last but not least, the tool is tightly pledged. We all know that file > formats suck and they contain lots of bugs. For increased security, I > have included pledge support right from the start. Before even one > instruction of one of these image libraries is called, pledge is already > down to "stdio". That's really tight! :) > > All in all, it can be compiled with 0 dependencies with xenocara. Keep > in mind that you just have XPM support then, though. > > It's not in ports (yet?). It would be really great if you can give it a > try, experiment a bit, and give me feedback. If you are an XCB expert > and/or into code reviewing: Please do so! And if you have a big endian > machine, it would be great if you can see if it works there as well. > > The project as well as its release files can be found on GitHub: > https://github.com/stoeckmann/xwallpaper > > > Hope someone finds this tool useful, too.
It does what it says on the tin, really handy. Thanks for sharing. > Tobias > -Bryan.
