KALEID(1) KALEID(1)
NAME
kaleid - X11 Kaleidoscope Display
SYNOPSIS
kaleid
[-bd border] [-bg background] [-bstore] [-bw borderwidth] [-clip
x,y,w,h[,x,y,w,h[,...]]] [-colors color1[,color2[,...]]] [-delay
msec] [-display displayname] [-geometry geometry] [-icondelay
msec] [-iconic] [-mono] [-mult number] [-qix] [-r] [-randomcolor]
[-refresh]
HP-UX COMPATIBILITY
Origin: User Contributed
DESCRIPTION
Kaleid runs a colorful kaleidoscope display in an X11 window. The
16-color palette is chosen to approximate the default palette found on
EGA and VGA displays.
With window managers that support icon windows (such as uwm), the
kaleid icon is a small kaleidoscope window that runs a slow
kaleidoscope display (see -icondelay option, below).
Options:
-bd Specify border color; defaults to white.
-bg Specify background color; defaults to black.
-bstore
Enable backing store on kaleid windows.
-bw Specify border width in pixels; defaults to 2.
-clip
Specify clipping rectangles to be used in the kaleid window(s).
You can specify one or more clipping rectangles by x, y, width,
and height in floating-point coordinates. The values specified
are scaled to the window size, and can range from 0.0 to 1.0. So
``-clip 0,0,1,1'' specifies the entire window, while ``-clip
0,0,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5,.5'' specifies the upper-left and lower-right
quadrants of the window. Note that kaleid does not check for
reasonable values, nor does it check for violation of X's
requirement that clipping rectangles not overlap.
-colors
Specify up to 16 colors to use instead of the default palette.
This option is overridden by the -randomcolors option. Example
of syntax: ``-colors red,green''. If a color is specified that
does not exist in the server's rgb database, color allocation
will silently fail.
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KALEID(1) KALEID(1)
-delay
Specify a delay (in msec) to be performed between drawing each
set of lines - can be used to avoid swamping the X11 server.
Defaults to 10 (100 when -r option, below, is used).
-display
Specify display on which to run; defaults to contents of DISPLAY
environment variable.
-geometry
Specify window geometry; defaults to =300x300+0+0.
-icondelay
Specify the delay to be used when drawing to the kaleid icon.
Defaults to 100 msec.
-iconic
Cause kaleid to come up in the iconic state.
-mono
Force kaleid to run in monochrome mode (default behavior on a
monochrome display).
-mult
Run specified number of kaleid windows. Each window is a top-
level window with an associated icon. See the note on WINDOW
MANAGER INTERACTIONS (below) for details on where the multiple
windows get mapped.
-qix Run a completely different ``Qix''-type drawing algorithm instead
of kaleidoscope.
-r Run kaleid in the root window. This option causes kaleid to
ignore all options irrelevant to running in the root window, with
one exception: the geometry string is interpreted in a strange
and different manner. The width and height are interpreted as
number of horizontal and vertical sections into which the root
window is divided. For example, a geometry specification of =3x2
will result in six kaleidoscope patterns laid out in a 3x2 array
in the root window.
-randomcolor
Instead of the standard palette, use a randomly-generated palette
that is randomly changed at times during kaleid's execution.
This option causes kaleid to allocate read/write color cells
instead of read-only color cells, and will not work on a display
whose default visual type is StaticColor, StaticGray, or
TrueColor.
-refresh
If an obscured portion a window containing a kaleid display is
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KALEID(1) KALEID(1)
exposed, refresh the window. This results in redrawing
everything that has been drawn since the last time the window was
cleared.
NOTE
Specifying a delay (icondelay) value of 0 will cause kaleid to draw
into its window (icon) at top speed, bogging down your server and, if
kaleid is run remotely, your network. The default delay value was
chosen to work well on a fast CPU with a fast X server -- it is
probably too low for many systems.
If kaleid and the server are running on the same CPU, running kaleid
with a higher nice (nice(1)) value will usually produce good results
without 1) swamping the server, and 2) requiring you to impose an
unpleasantly long delay.
AUTHORSHIP
There have been many different kaleidoscope programs for many
different flavors of computers and PCs over the years. The
kaleidoscope algorithm in kaleid was derived from the public-domain
kaleidoscope program for IBM PCs by Judson D. McClendon (Sun Valley
Systems, 329 37th Court N.E., Birmingham, AL, 35215, CompuServe
address [74415,1003]). X11 kaleid was written by Nathan Meyers of
Hewlett-Packard (nathanm@hp-pcd.hp.com).
WINDOW MANAGER INTERACTIONS
Some window managers do not appear to cope very well with window
icons, resulting in strange icon behavior. Uwm does not suffer from
this problem, although problems can occur when changing window
managers (to or from uwm) during execution of kaleid.
On window managers that support window icons and that specify icon
sizing hints, kaleid will respect the icon sizing hints, creating the
largest permissible icon. Without icon sizing hints, the default icon
size is 64x64.
Kaleid maps all of its top-level windows to =+0+0 unless overridden by
a geometry string, and all of its icon windows to =+0+0. Where the
windows and icons actually end up is a function of how your window
manager handles placement of windows and icons. Uwm, for example,
will request manual window placement for each top-level window if a
geometry string is not specified, but will leave all icons mapped at
=+0+0. Conversely, with window managers that maintain galleries or
grids of icons, multiple kaleid icons can be spectacular.
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