joeyjwc
August 22nd, 2007, 01:02 PM
First of all, why am I asking this silly question?
A while ago, I began to develop Bazzite, a splash manager for Beryl. It would directly access the INI settings file and change it based on "splash themes" that people could download.
Such themes were stored in a single package with a .bazzite extension. They consisted of two parts. The first part was the collection of splash images, the background image and the logo image. The second part controlled all of the features of the Splash Plugin, such as Fade Time, Display Time, Saturation, and Brightness. This was stored as an INI file. Upon running Bazzite and selecting a theme, the user would be able to change the way his or her splash screen looked extremely easily.
Furthermore, the early testing version of Bazzite that I had released contained a package creator as well. By simply instructing the application where to find the images, and then giving it the parameters for the Fade Time, etc., users could easily make their own .bazzite packages. The package creator would also automatically create a pseudo-screenshot using a little ImageMagick (was that a pun?). Yes, it would even make the background wavy like the real splash manager.
And on top of that, I built a web-based theme repository. Users could submit their own .bazzite packages to the site and the upload script would automatically extract most of the necessary information, including the screenshot, and would create an entry in the database.
You can find the software page here:
http://joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/software/bazzite/index.php
And the repository here:
http://joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/bazzite/
I had finished a large chunk of the software. It was able to do all of the stuff that I described above. I only needed to replace the CLI with a GUI (and make the code more object oriented), add a few more features to the repository, and formalize the .bazzite package structure.
I was excited to see that my code was more or less working. There was just one issue. A few days after I released one of the early testing versions, Beryl merged with Compiz. Which made most of my work effectively useless.
So, now that Compiz Fusion is more or less here to stay, I would like to ask three questions. How many of you all use a splash screen when they start up Compiz Fusion? If you do, would you be interested in using an automated splash theme manager? Also, would you be interested in creating splash themes using the package creator (this is mainly directed at all the amazing artwork people out there, because I sure as heck can't create anything decent)?
If a substantial number of people are interested in using a splash theme manager, I'll regain my motivation to complete the project. Of course, I'll need to change some things (including support for GConf and KConfig), but much of the code can be ported to Compiz Fusion without too much trouble.
Thanks very much for your input.
A while ago, I began to develop Bazzite, a splash manager for Beryl. It would directly access the INI settings file and change it based on "splash themes" that people could download.
Such themes were stored in a single package with a .bazzite extension. They consisted of two parts. The first part was the collection of splash images, the background image and the logo image. The second part controlled all of the features of the Splash Plugin, such as Fade Time, Display Time, Saturation, and Brightness. This was stored as an INI file. Upon running Bazzite and selecting a theme, the user would be able to change the way his or her splash screen looked extremely easily.
Furthermore, the early testing version of Bazzite that I had released contained a package creator as well. By simply instructing the application where to find the images, and then giving it the parameters for the Fade Time, etc., users could easily make their own .bazzite packages. The package creator would also automatically create a pseudo-screenshot using a little ImageMagick (was that a pun?). Yes, it would even make the background wavy like the real splash manager.
And on top of that, I built a web-based theme repository. Users could submit their own .bazzite packages to the site and the upload script would automatically extract most of the necessary information, including the screenshot, and would create an entry in the database.
You can find the software page here:
http://joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/software/bazzite/index.php
And the repository here:
http://joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/bazzite/
I had finished a large chunk of the software. It was able to do all of the stuff that I described above. I only needed to replace the CLI with a GUI (and make the code more object oriented), add a few more features to the repository, and formalize the .bazzite package structure.
I was excited to see that my code was more or less working. There was just one issue. A few days after I released one of the early testing versions, Beryl merged with Compiz. Which made most of my work effectively useless.
So, now that Compiz Fusion is more or less here to stay, I would like to ask three questions. How many of you all use a splash screen when they start up Compiz Fusion? If you do, would you be interested in using an automated splash theme manager? Also, would you be interested in creating splash themes using the package creator (this is mainly directed at all the amazing artwork people out there, because I sure as heck can't create anything decent)?
If a substantial number of people are interested in using a splash theme manager, I'll regain my motivation to complete the project. Of course, I'll need to change some things (including support for GConf and KConfig), but much of the code can be ported to Compiz Fusion without too much trouble.
Thanks very much for your input.