rotzoomer(6x)

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay so rotzoomer is this iconic little XScreenSaver hack from the 6x manual — and it's literally all about animated rotations and scalings of chunks of your screen. bestie, it's giving kaleidoscope but make it chaotic 💫

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rotzoomer [--display host:display.screen] [--move | --no-move] [--delay millisecs] [--duration secs] [--n count] [--shm | --no-shm] [--window] [--root] [--window-id number][--install] [--visual visual] [--fps]

---

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so here's the vibe: rotzoomer snags an image, then picks out a bunch of rectangles and draws scaled + rotated animations of those sections. like it's remixing your screen in real time, no cap 🔥

the image it plays with gets grabbed from one of three places — the part of the screen sitting under the window, the system's video input, or a random file on disk. which one you get is controlled by the grabDesktopImages, grabVideoFrames, and chooseRandomImages options in your ~/.xscreensaver file. if you want the full tea on that, go read xscreensaver-settings(1) 🫶

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

rotzoomer accepts the following options, and yes, we're going through every single one 👑

• --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so it's basically main character energy by default ✨
• --root — draw on the root window instead. going full desktop wallpaper mode 🌈
• --window-id number — draw on the window you specifically point at with that number 🎯
• --install — install a private colormap for the window. fancy 💅
• --visual visual — pick which visual to use. legal values are either the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual 🖼️
• --delay milliseconds — how much of a delay gets introduced between steps of the animation. default is 10, aka about 1/100th of a second ⏱️
• --duration seconds — how long it runs before loading a new image. default is 120 seconds 🕰️
• --move — makes the rectangles wander around the screen. they're on a little journey, let them live 🦋
• --no-move — makes the rectangles stay stationary. this is the default. lowkey chill rectangles 🧘
• --n count — how many rectangles animate simultaneously. default is 2 🎀
• --no-shm — disables use of the SHM extension, even if it looks like it's available. sometimes you just gotta opt out 🙈
• --fps — display the current frame rate and CPU load. numbers on screen, we love to see it 📊

---

🌿 ENVIRONMENT 🌿

• DISPLAY — used to get the default host and display number 🖥️
• XENVIRONMENT — used to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property 📄
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root 🪟

---

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

X(1), xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-settings(1), xscreensaver-getimage(6x) — go read the whole family, iykyk 💖

---

👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright © 2001 by Claudio Matsuoka. 💜

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 🫶

bestie that last bit means: no promises it won't do something weird, fr fr 💀

---

⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Claudio Matsuoka <claudio@helllabs.org> 🌸

---

okay that's the whole page!! it's from X Version 11, dated 6.09 (07-Jun-2024), and the manual page is rotzoomer(6x) — go forth and rotate some rectangles, bestie 💅✨