GWYDDION-THUMBNAILE(1)

💖 GWYDDION-THUMBNAILE(1) 💖

okay so bestie, this is the manual page for gwyddion-thumbnailer from the Gwyddion manual — yes the name at the top says GWYDDION-THUMBNAILE(1) and that's just how the section header gets printed, don't @ me 💅

---

✨ NAME ✨

gwyddion-thumbnailer — Create thumbnails of SPM data files 🖼️

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gwyddion-thumbnailer {--version | --help}

gwyddion-thumbnailer [OPTION...] {MODE} [ARGUMENT...]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So gwyddion-thumbnailer makes thumbnails out of SPM (Scanning Probe Microscope) image files. Depending on which mode you're in (modes explained below, stay with me 🫶), the thumbnails get written so they match up with a bunch of desktop standards, which means they can actually show up in nautilus(1), thunar(1), and other file managers of that whole vibe.

gwyddion-thumbnailer loads and renders files using gwyddion(1), plus its libraries and modules — so lowkey it can thumbnail every single file format your Gwyddion install supports 👑. And the flip side of that: it inherits your Gwyddion settings (hi, default false color gradient 🌈) and it's influenced by the exact same environment variables that Gwyddion is.

---

🎀 INFORMATIVE OPTIONS 🎀

• --help — Prints a brief help and terminates. That's it, that's the whole thing ✨
• --version — Prints version information and terminates. Slay.

---

💅 THUMBNAILING OPTIONS 💅

• --update — Writes the thumbnail only if it doesn't exist yet or doesn't seem to be up-to-date. And jsyk, by default gwyddion-thumbnailer overwrites existing thumbnails with fresh ones even if they seem up to date — so if you don't want that, this is your flag, bestie.

---

⭐ MODE ⭐

There are three thumbnailing modes: gnome2, tms, and kde4. Plus one special mode: check. All four described below, no skipping 💖

---

🧚 GNOME 2 🧚

gwyddion-thumbnailer [OPTION...] gnome2 MAX-SIZE INPUT-FILE OUTPUT-FILE

In gnome2 mode, gwyddion-thumbnailer creates PNG thumbnails according to the Gnome thumbnailer specification. Following the convention from that very spec, you should run it like:

gwyddion-thumbnailer gnome2 %s %i %o

Gwyddion installs the corresponding GConf schemas and turns on thumbnailers for all the file types it supports by default — so usually this should Just Work™ and you don't need to set anything up manually 🙈

The thumbnails created in gnome2 mode are identical to the ones from tms mode, including all the PNG auxiliary chunks (as long as the same MAX-SIZE as in tms mode is specified, obviously 💀).

---

🌸 TMS 🌸

gwyddion-thumbnailer [OPTION...] tms MAX-SIZE INPUT-FILE

In tms mode, gwyddion-thumbnailer creates PNG thumbnails according to the Thumbnail Managing Standard. Argument MAX-SIZE has to be 128 or normal (both meaning 128 pixels) or 256 or large (both meaning 256 pixels). Periodt.

You don't give an output file name here — the TMS prescribes it for you 👑. The thumbnail gets placed into the directory for normal or large thumbnails depending on the MAX-SIZE you gave.

This mode is also genuinely useful for manually batch-creating thumbnails. For example, to create them for all *.afm files in the directory scans and its subdirectories, you can run:

find scans -type f -name ´*.afm´ -print0 \\
    | xargs -0 -n 1 gwyddion-thumbnailer --update tms normal

And then go make yourself a coffee ☕ because this is going to take a while, fr fr.

---

💜 KDE 4 💜

gwyddion-thumbnailer kde4 MAX-SIZE INPUT-FILE

In kde4 mode, gwyddion-thumbnailer creates PNG thumbnails meant to be consumed by the gwythumbcreator KDE module. The thumbnail — again identical to the other modes — is written to the standard output.

🚨 Do not use this mode from the command line. It's documented here for completeness only, but the protocol between gwythumbcreator and gwyddion-thumbnailer must be considered private and it can change any time.

---

🔥 CHECK 🔥

gwyddion-thumbnailer check INPUT-FILE

The check mode is not for creating thumbnails, bestie, it's a whole different thing. Instead, gwyddion-thumbnailer prints info about the available thumbnails of INPUT-FILE plus the cached failures to produce a thumbnail by individual applications, as described by the TMS.

So like, if the normal-sized thumbnail exists and is up to date, the large version doesn't exist, and there's one cached failure from gnome-thumbnail-factory, the output can be for instance:

File:   INPUT-FILE
URI:    file:///home/me/Pictures/naughty/broken-tip3/INPUT-FILE
Normal: /home/me/.thumbnails/normal/MD5.png
        status: OK
Large:  /home/me/.thumbnails/large/MD5.png
        status: Thumbnail does not exist or stat() fails on it.
Failed: /home/me/.thumbnails/fail/gnome-thumbnail-factory/MD5.png

URI is the canonical URI of the input file, and MD5 stands for the hex representation of the MD5 sum of the URI, as described by the TMS 💅 If there are no cached failures, no Failed lines get printed.

This function can be used to check thumbnails of any kind, not necessarily ones created by gwyddion or gwyddion-thumbnailer. In the future though, it might be reported as an error if the thumbnail doesn't contain Gwyddion-specific information 👀

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

gwyddion(1),

---

💖 AUTHOR 💖

Yeti Author.

---

and that's the whole page, babe — written for the gwyddion manual, dated 09/04/2009, and yes the footer at the bottom of the real page just says gwyddion, 09/04/2009, GWYDDION-THUMBNAILE(1) again. iconic, honestly 🎀✨