BSDforge™
Following, are FreeBSD ports, or other *BSD related projects, hosted, or worked on at BSDforge in the x11 category.
- wmblob
- Shows moving blobs
-
wmblob is a pretty much useless program, that shows moving blobs. It's a nice dockapp for Window Maker (www.windowmaker.org), and it may well run with other window mangers.
How to use it:
Just start it. There are no command line options. You can change the colors with the three mouse buttons.
- Left button: changes the inner color of the blobs.
- Middle button: changes the border color of the blobs.
- Right button: changes the background color.
There are 16 colors available. But not all combinations look good.
- How it works
- This is a cheap description for those who are interested in `how it works'. Excuse my bad english. If you have comments, questions (or corrections), drop my an email. I took the expression `blob' from the Persistence of Vision Raytracer (www.povray.org). There's an object called blob useful for modelling organic shapes. It has much in common with my blobs. A blob is just a simple function, and looks somewhat like this: ^(intensity) | --------------> | --> . +...............******.................................. | * * . | * * . | * .* . | * .* . | * . * . | * . * . | ** . ** . | *** . *** . | **** . **** (location) 0***-----------------+-----------+**********************-> Of course, this is just a blob in one dimension, I think you will understand, what a blob looks like in two dimensions. (Drawing 3-D AsciiArt pictures by hand is over my skills.) The vertical axis is the intensity at the given location of the blob. The horizontal dotted line shows the maximal intensity, which means `white' in the default color settings. The small arrow shows the radius of that `plateau' with maximal intensity, the big arrow is the falloff radius. Between those two radii the intensity drops from the maximum to zero and remains zero outside the falloff radius. (Which is not really nessessary, but it's easier, because this way the blobs have a finite size.) Now it s time, to put two blobs near to each other: ^ +...............******............%%%%%%................ | * * % % | * * % % | * * % % | * * % % | * * % % | * * % % | ** ** %% %% | *** %##* %%% | **** %%%% **** %%%% 0###%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%------------******************###*-> We simply add together the values of the two blobs, at every point of the picture: ^ +...............******............%%%%%%................ | * * % % | * + + % | * + + % | * + + % | * ++ ++ % | * ++++ % | ** %% | *** %%% | **** %%%% 0***------------------------------------------------%%%%-> This gives a glued-together-impression, because the intensity does not reach zero between the blobs. If we put the blobs even closer together, we will have something like this: ^ +...............+++++++...+++++++....................... | + + + + | + + + | + + | + + | * * | * * | ** ** | *** *** | **** **** 0***-----------------------------------------***********-> There's only a small gap left between the blobs. They're hard to distinguish. Note: We can't have intensities beyond the dotted line, because it represents the maximum intensity. So if the sum is above it, we have to clamp it. Now let's put the two blobs at the same place: ^ +.............**********................................ | * * | * * | * * | * * | * * | ** ** | * * | ** ** | ** ** 0***------------------------------**********************-> It looks like one big blob! Voilà, it's as simple as this. Ok, no, it's not the whole truth. All I have explained is the first blob animation I ever made, but wmblob is a bit more complicated.
Installation
- On a FreeBSD system;
Using the ports system:
cd /usr/ports/x11/wmblob make install clean
Using the pkg system:pkg install x11/wmblob