Provided by: xpenguins_2.2-11_amd64 bug

NAME

       xpenguins - cute little penguins that walk along the tops of your windows

SYNOPSIS

       xpenguins [-option ...]

DESCRIPTION

       XPenguins  is  a  program  for  animating  cute  cartoons/animals in your root window.  By
       default it will be penguins - they drop in from the top of the screen, walk along the tops
       of your windows, up the side of your windows, levitate, skateboard, and do other similarly
       exciting things. Be careful when you move windows as the little guys squash easily. If you
       send  the  program  an  interrupt  signal  (such  as  by  hitting Ctrl-C) they will burst.
       XPenguins is now themeable, so it is easy to select something else to animate  instead  of
       penguins,  or even (with a little artistic talent) define your own; see the THEMES section
       below.

OPTIONS

       In all the following cases a double dash can be replaced by a single dash.

       -a, --no-angels
               Do not show any cherubim flying up to heaven when a toon gets squashed.

       -b, --no-blood
               Do not show any gory death sequences.

       -c dir, --config-dir dir
               Look for config files and  themes  in  this  directory.  The  default  is  usually
               /usr/share/xpenguins.

       -d display, --display display
               Send  the  toons  to  the  specified X display. In the absence of this option, the
               display specified by the DISPLAY environment variable is used.

       -h, --help
               Print out a message describing the available options.

       -i, --theme-info
               Print out the auxiliary information about a theme and exit. Use the -t  option  to
               select the theme to describe.

       --random-theme
               Start with a random theme.

       -l, --list-themes
               List the available themes, one on each line, and exit.

       -m delay, --delay delay
               Set  the  delay  between each frame in milliseconds. The default is defined by the
               theme.

       -n number, --penguins number
               The number of toons to start, up to a maximum of 256. The default  is  defined  by
               the theme.

       -p, --ignorepopups
               Toons fall through `popup' windows (those with the save-under attribute set), such
               as tooltips. Note that this also includes the KDE panel.

       -r, --rectwin
               Toons regard all windows as rectangular. This option results in faster calculation
               of  window  positions,  but if you use one of those fancy new window managers with
               shaped windows then your toons might sometimes look like they're walking  on  thin
               air.

       -s, --squish
               Enable  the penguins to be squished using any of the mouse buttons. Note that this
               disables any existing function of the mouse buttons on the root window.

       -t theme, --theme theme
               Use the named theme. The default is Penguins.  If the theme has spaces in its name
               then you can use underscores instead, or alternatively just put the name in double
               quotes.  This  option  can  be  called  multiple  times  to  run  several   themes
               simultaneously.

       -q, --quiet
               Suppress the exit message when an interrupt is received.

       -v, --version
               Print out the current version number and quit.

       --all   Load all available themes and run them simultaneously.

       --id window
               Send  toons  to  the  window with this ID, instead of the root window or whichever
               window is appropriate for the current desktop environment. Note that the ID  of  X
               clients  reported  by  xwininfo is rarely that of the foremost visible window that
               should be used here.

       --nice loadaverage1 loadaverage2
               Start killing toons when the 1-min averaged system load exceeds loadaverage1; when
               it  exceeds  loadaverage2  kill  them  all.  The toons will reappear when the load
               average  comes  down.  The  load  is  checked  every  5  seconds  by  looking   in
               /proc/loadavg,  so  this  option  only  works  under  unices  that  implement this
               particular pseudo file (probably just Linux). When  there  are  no  toons  on  the
               screen,  XPenguins  uses  only  a  minuscule amount of CPU time - it just wakes up
               every 5 seconds to recheck the load.

THEMES

       The system themes are usually  kept  in  /usr/share/xpenguins/themes,  and  these  can  be
       augmented  or  overridden by the user's themes in $HOME/.xpenguins/themes.  Each theme has
       its own subdirectory which to be valid must contain a file called config.  The name of the
       theme  is  taken  from  the directory name, although because many install scripts choke on
       directory names containing spaces, all spaces in a  theme  name  are  represented  in  the
       directory  name  by  underscores.  Any directory name containing spaces is inaccessible by
       xpenguins.

       In addition to the config file, the theme directory contains the toon images that make  up
       the  theme  in  the  form of xpm image files.  Additionally, there should be an about file
       which gives information on the creator of  the  theme,  the  license  under  which  it  is
       distributed   and   various   other   things.   This   file  is  principally  for  use  by
       xpenguins_applet, an applet for GNOME that allows different themes to be selected  at  the
       click of a button.

       The  config  file has a reasonably straightforward format. You can either read this rather
       terse description of it or you can have a look at the config file for the default Penguins
       theme,  which  is usually installed at /usr/share/xpenguins/themes/Penguins/config, and is
       reasonably well commented. We'll first establish some simple terminology. Say you  have  a
       Farmyard  theme  with  cows  and  sheep.  The  cows and sheep are types of toon, while the
       various things they get up to (walking, mooing and so on)  are  termed  activities.   Each
       activity  has  its  own  xpm image file, in which the frames of the animation are laid out
       horizontally. Some activities (notably walking) use  different  images  depending  on  the
       direction  the  toon is moving in. In this case the frames for the two directions are laid
       out one above the other in the image.

       As in shell scripts, comments are initiated with the # character and hide the remainder of
       the  line.  The  format  is  entirely  free except that there is an arbitrary limit on the
       length of a line of 512 characters.  Spaces, tabs and newlines all count equally as  white
       space.  Data  is  entered  as a sequence of key value pairs, all separated by white space.
       Neither the keys nor the values are case sensitive, except where the value is a  filename.
       The following keys are understood:

       delay delay
               Set the recommended delay between frames in milliseconds.

       toon toon
               Begin defining a new toon called toon.  If only one type of toon is present in the
               theme then this key may be omitted.

       number number
               Set the default number of toons of the current type to start.

       define activity
               Begin defining  an  activity  for  the  current  toon.  The  currently  understood
               activities  are  walker,  faller,  tumbler,  climber,  floater, runner, explosion,
               squashed, zapped, splatted, angel, exit and action?, where ? is a number between 0
               and  6.   Once you've seen the program in action you should be able to guess which
               is which. A valid theme must contain at least walkers and fallers.   Additionally,
               you  may  define a default activity (with define default); any properties (such as
               width and speed) set here are then adopted by the activities defined from then on,
               if  they  do not themselves explicitly define those properties.  After an activity
               has been declared with define, the following properties may be assigned:

       pixmap xpmfile
               The file containing the image data for the activity. Note that you may not  set  a
               default pixmap.

       width width
               The width of each frame of the animation in pixels.

       height height
               The height of each frame of the animation in pixels.

       frames frames
               The number of frames in the animation.

       directions directions
               The number of directions for the activity (can be 1 or 2).

       speed speed
               The initial speed of the toon when engaged in this activity, in pixels per frame.

       acceleration acceleration
               The  rate at which the speed increases, in pixels per frame squared. This property
               is not utilised by all activities.

       terminal_velocity terminal_velocity
               The maximum speed in pixels per frame, again not utilised by all activities.

       loop loop
               Only understood by the actions; indicates how many times to repeat the action.  If
               negative,  then  the  probility  of  stopping  the action every time the action is
               complete is -1/loop.

       Some notes regarding the various activities. If you design a new theme, feel free to  make
       the  splatted,  squashed,  zapped  and exit animations as gory and bloody as you like, but
       please keep the explosion activity nice and tame; that way those of a nervous  disposition
       can  employ  the --no-blood option which replaces all these violent deaths with a tasteful
       explosion that wouldn't offend your grandmother. Xpm images files  are  a  factor  of  two
       smaller  if  you can limit the number of colours in the image such that only one character
       need be used to represent each colour; this  also  makes  XPenguins  start  up  much  more
       rapidly. Rarely are more than 64 colours required.

       So that's about it for the config file, now for the about file. This is very simple. Again
       comments are initialised by a #.  An entry consists of a key  at  the  start  of  a  line,
       followed  by  the  corresponding value which is read up to the next newline. The following
       keys are understood, although none are compulsory.

       artist  Used to list the artist(s) who created the original images.

       maintainer
               The person who compiled the images into an XPenguins theme. It  is  useful  if  an
               email address can also be provided.

       date    The  date  when  the  theme  was  last modified. My preferred format is day of the
               month, name of the month in english, full year.  For example: 24 April 2001.

       icon    The name of an image file that can be used as an icon for the theme; XPM  and  PNG
               are suitable formats.

       license The name of the license under which the theme is distributed (e.g. GPL).

       copyright
               The year and holder of the copyright.

       comment Any  other  essential  information,  such  as  the  theme's  web site, as brief as
               possible.

               Please test any about files you create  by  looking  at  how  the  information  is
               displayed by the xpenguins_applet program.

AUTHOR

       Robin Hogan <R.J.Hogan@reading.ac.uk>.

CREDITS

       Inspiration provided by Rick Jansen <rick@sara.nl> in the form of the classic xsnow.  Most
       penguin images were taken from Pingus,  a  free  lemmings  clone  that  can  be  found  at
       <http://pingus.seul.org/>;     these    images    were    designed    by    Joel    Fauche
       <joel.fauche@wanadoo.fr>  and  Craig  Timpany  <timpany@es.co.nz>.  Additional  images  in
       version 2 by Rob Gietema <tycoon@planetdescent.com> and Robin Hogan.

NOTES

       XPenguins  can  load an X server and/or network (although the CPU time used is small), and
       if a large number of penguins are spawned then they may begin to flicker, depending on the
       speed of the X server.

       The xpenguins homepage is located at:

       http://xpenguins.seul.org/

BUGS

       A  new  feature  since  version  2.1 is the ability to draw to windows other than the root
       window in situations where the window manager or desktop environment places a large window
       over  the root window that would otherwise obscure the toons. Currently XPenguins can draw
       to the KDE Desktop (KDE 2.0 and 2.1), Enlightenment desktops greater  than  0  (E16),  the
       Nautilus  desktop  and  the virtual root window of certain window managers like amiwm.  Of
       course, simpler window managers that don't mess around like this will still work (sawfish,
       blackbox  and  countless  others). It cannot work with CDE and probably never will. Future
       versions of KDE, Enlightenment and Nautilus may not work; the classic symptom of  this  is
       that  XPenguins  sits  there as if it's doing something, but no toons are visible. If this
       happens, try running the program with one of the simpler window manager listed  above,  or
       visit  the XPenguins web site and download the latest version. If there are icons drawn on
       the root window then the toons will erase them when  they  walk  over  them,  although  an
       expose event will be sent to the window every 100 frames to redraw them.

FILES

       $HOME/.xpenguins/themes/*
       /usr/share/xpenguins/themes/*
       /proc/loadavg

SEE ALSO

       xsnow(1), xroach(1), xwininfo(1) pingus(6)