xss/README

== xss ==

`xss` uses the nearly 20-year-old MIT-SCREEN-SAVER extension to launch a
program when the X server turns on the built-in screen saver.

`xsswin` makes a full-screen black window and runs some other program,
passing along the window ID in the environment ($XSS_WINDOW) and
possibly as an argument (XSS_WINDOW gets replaced with the id).

`xkeygrab` grabs the keyboard and mouse, and echoes all typed lines to
stdout.

`xcursorpos` prints out the x and y coordinates of the cursor.

`magic` is a reimplementation of the "magic" screen saver from After
Dark.


Examples
--------

Tell the X server to launch the screen saver after 90 seconds idle:

    xset s 90


Run like `xautolock`:

    xss xlock -mode qix &


Shell script to run `magic` while waiting for a pass word from the keybord.  Won't
do anything if the cursor is in the upper-left corner:

    #! /bin/sh
    
    xcursorpos | (read x y; [ $x -lt 20 -a $y -lt 20 ]) && exit 0
    xsswin magic XSS_WINDOW &
    pid=$!
    xkeygrab | (while [ "$l" != "secret" ]; do read l; done)
    kill $pid


Download
--------

You can download a [tarball of the latest
commit](http://woozle.org/~neale/repos/?p=xss;a=snapshot) or use git:

    git clone http://woozle.org/~neale/repos/xss/


History
-------

AIX apparently had something also called `xss` which did almost exactly
what mine does, but with command-line options.

`magic` is similar to the `qix` hack from xscreensaver and xlock.

I'm not aware of anything else like the rest of the programs, which is
why I wrote them.

I lifted some code from `beforelight` from the X11 distribution, and
from `slock` from [suckless.org](http://suckless.org/).  Both have a
BSD/X11-like license.


------

Neale Pickett <neale@woozle.org>