---
name: "webcollage"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "xscreensaver"
version: "3.34-3"
release: "Debian 3.0 (Woody)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/webcollage"
---

# webcollage(1)

decorate the screen with random images from the web

## NAME

webcollage - decorate the screen with random images from the web

## SYNOPSIS

**webcollage** \[-display *host:display.screen*\] \[-root\] \[-verbose\] \[-delay *secs*\] \[-timeout *secs*\] \[-background *bg*\] \[-filter *command*\] \[-filter2 *command*\] \[-http-proxy host\[:port\]\]

## DESCRIPTION

The *webcollage* 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 [**giftopnm**(1)](/giftopnm/1.md), [**djpeg**(1)](/djpeg/1.md), and [**xli**(1)](/xli/1.md), **xv**(1), or **xloadimage**(1) tools.

*webcollage* is written in [**perl**(1)](/perl/1.md) and requires Perl 5.

## OPTIONS

*webcollage* accepts the following options:

- **-root**

  Draw on the root window.  This option is manditory: drawing to a window other than the root window is not yet supported.

- **-verbose or -v**

  Print diagnostics to stderr.  Multiple *-v* switches increase the amount of output.  *-v* will print out only the URLs of the  images; *-vv* will print all the commands being run; and *-vvv* will print more than you care about.

- **-delay *seconds***

  How long to sleep between images.  Default 1 second.  (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 hexadecimal RGB specification in the form '#rrggbb', or  the name of a PPM file.

- **-timeout *seconds***

  How long to wait for a URL to complete before giving up on it and moving on to the next one. Default 30 seconds.

- **-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 variables.

## 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\_MANAGER property.

- **http\_proxy or HTTP\_PROXY**

  to get the default HTTP proxy host and port.

## FILES AND URLS

- */usr/dict/words or /usr/share/lib/dict/words or /usr/share/dict/words*

  To find the random words to feed to search engines.

*http://random.yahoo.com/bin/ryl, http://image.altavista.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)](/xscreensaver/1.md) manual for more details.)

Only the GIF and JPEG image formats are supported.

Transparent and animating GIFs are not supported.

It's slow.

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.

## SEE ALSO

**X**(1), [**xscreensaver**(1)](/xscreensaver/1.md), [**xli**(1)](/xli/1.md), **xv**(1), **xloadimage**(1), [**ppmmake**(1)](/ppmmake/1.md), [**giftopnm**(1)](/giftopnm/1.md), [**pnmpaste**(1)](/pnmpaste/1.md), [**pnmscale**(1)](/pnmscale/1.md), [**djpeg**(1)](/djpeg/1.md), [**cjpeg**(1)](/cjpeg/1.md), [**xdpyinfo**(1)](/xdpyinfo/1.md), [**perl**(1)](/perl/1.md), [**vidwhacker**(1)](/vidwhacker/1.md), [**dadadodo**(1)](/dadadodo/1.md)

## COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 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  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.