This is public release of ChBg distributed under GPL.
About :
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- chbg was created, because I was looking for some proram, that can
change background pictures with any period same as I saw somewhere on
win9x machine. And I found none, so I wrote chbg.
- chbg can render picture with 10 modes
- uses optionaly Rasterman's Imlib1, gdk_imlib, Imlib2 or Gnome gdk-pixbuf
for loading images -> many supported input formats
- have nice GUI setup writen by using of GTK+ libraries
- handles scenario files
- randomizes picture showing order
- can act as screeensaver (-screensave option)
- can be used as screensaver in cooperation with xscreensaver
- each picture should have own settings
- different picture changing efects
- can recursive search directories for pictures using optional wildcard
patterns
- can run in own toplevel window (-inwindow option)
- can run in foreign X window (-windowid option)
- can make many different gradient shadings of background between two
colors or by by GIMP gradients
- have thumbnails previewer which can be used as quite good image viewer
and selector for images for batch processing with external commandline
image processing tools
- can be used to scale or convert selected pictures from thumbnail previews
using "convert" program from ImageMagick package
- can be used for comfortable renaming of selected pictures
- can render transparent pictures with full alpha chanel
- can use tiled pictures for painting shading effects
- can render banners on top of background picture in various modes
- can talk to Enlightenment WM to set the background picture
....?
Supported image loading libraries
---------------------------------
* Imlib1
- quite good for loading normal images and have no problem when using
chbg just for changing background pictures. It uses plain X11
interface and that causes problems with managing cached pixmaps
in thumbnail preview. This library doesn't support pictures with
alpha chanel and chbg doesn't support proper handling of
transparent pictures with this library. I don't recomend to use
this library when you have some of other supported.
* gdk_imlib
- this was the first library which chbg supported. It is derivated
from Imlib1 and adapted to be used naturaly with GTK+ widget set
and its underalying GDK library. It is good for use with chbg
while you don't want to view transparent pictures or pictures
with alpha chanel, because this library have very problematic
alpha chanel support. Nor transparent pictures are supported
with this library. This is just deprecated library and I think
it will disapper soon, because Gnome and also Enlightenment have
just new image loading libraries (gdk_pixbuf and Imlib2).
* gdk_pixbuf
- this is quite new library developed by Gnome people to replace
gdk_imlib in Gnome applications. It is very good for use with
chbg. It supports perfectly loading and displaying of transparent
pictures. It also loads perfectly pictures with alpha chanel. Just
rendering of pictures with alpha chanel is currently problematic,
because full opacity is not yet supported inside this library.
(this is just not true, as in the current CVS version this was
just implemented. I wrote my own function to render pictures with
alpha chanel to RGB buffer, so showing of pictures with alha chanel
is quite well supported in chbg with this library with one exception
- thumbnail previews and picture view doesn't support this very well
because it desn't use RGB buffer to render image and instead of that
it uses yet unimplemented feature of gdk_pixbuf for rendering
pictures with alpha chanel to pixmap. This library also will be part
of future version of GTK+ library (2.0). This is recomended library
for chbg and in close future it allow to port chbg to WIN32 and
other platforms supported by GTK+-2.0.
* Imlib2
- this libary is direct sucessor of Imlib1 developed by Enlightenment
developers. It is in early stage of development, but I found it
very stable and usable for chbg. It fully supports all features
which I need in chbg, and have very good support for rendering
pictures with alpha chanel. It uses direct X11 interface and have
minor problems with integration with GTK+ used in chbg and is not
very smoth on 8bpp displays becasue it wan't share colormap with
GTK (but who beside me is still using 8bpp displays :-))
Currently this library is my favourite from user point of view,
because of its very high speed and full support for pictures with
alpha chanel. I recomend it to use with chbg.
License :
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Chbg is licensed under terms of GPL. See COPYING.
Ported to:
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-Linux (i486) (gcc)
-DEC OSF/1 4.0 (gcc)
Author :
--------
Ondrejicka Stefan (ondrej@idata.sk)
Home page:
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http://www.idata.sk/~ondrej/chbg/
If you find any bugs please send me report and or fix.
If you have any suggestions or quetions please write me.
