floatbg(1X)

✨ NAME ✨

floatbg — slowly modify the color of the X root window

Like, it's so chill about it. That's the whole job description bestie. 💅

🎀 SYNTAX 🎀

floatbg [-display display] [-help] [-gnome] [-xfce] [-value float]
[-satmid float] [-satvar float] [-fase float] [-time float]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so floatbg is an X11 program, and what it does is it modifies the color of the root window in such a manner that you won't even see the color change happening, but then after a while you'll notice that it did change, however. 😭 That's the trick. It's giving sneaky glow-up.

It starts with a random color and then changes it deterministically by moving through an hsv-model of colors. No cap.

So in the hsv-model, colors get described by three parameters, and here's the tea:

• Hue stands for the tint of a color — 0 degrees is red, 60 = yellow, 120 = green, 180 = aquamarine, etc.
• Saturation stands for the brightness of the color — 0 = white, 1 = bright.
• Value stands for the intensity of the color — 0 = black, 1 = normal.

Every 10 seconds the hue (tint) is increased by one degree, and the saturation (brightness) is changed by a sinus over the hue. 🦋 (The frequency of this change can be adjusted with the -time parameter.)

The shape of that sinus can be adapted with the options -satmid, -satvar and -fase. The value (blackness) is fixed and can be set with the option -value. And the default values are, and I quote:

floatbg -value .87 -satmid .375 -satvar .125 -fase .25

...and those defaults are such that all pastel tints are visited. Which is honestly iconic of them. 🌸

Now, the flag roster itself, in case you were wondering what's in the synopsis up there:

• -display, -help — they're part of the lineup, fr fr.
• -gnome, -xfce — extremely simplistic Gnome and Xfce support can be enabled with these two flags. That's the entire support situation. Extremely simplistic. She said what she said. 💀
• -time — adjusts the frequency of that every-10-seconds change.
• -satmid, -satvar, -fase — adapt the shape of the sinus.
• -value — sets the fixed value (blackness).

💀 BUGS 💀

floatbg doesn't use any window, button or menu, and it can only be stopped by killing it. 🫶 No pause, no quit, no graceful exit arc — just vibes until the kill. Bestie is a main character who does not take notes.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jan Rekers — rekers@cwi.nl

okay and that's the whole page, bestie ✨ this one lives in the 1X manual as floatbg(1X) — go forth and let your root window slowly, imperceptibly transform. 🎀💖