Typographers are a strange breed, often to be found discussing stems, glyphs and serifs, and going misty eyed at the mention of Helvetica Neue. But they are people too, and people deserve wallpaper that doesn't sit and stagnate. Perhaps even wallpaper that they like to look at!
So I've written a handy little script, to be run from the command line (and only tested on Ubuntu ... specifically my own installation of Ubuntu), which will generate and utilise a new wallpaper whenever you like.
How It Works
The script picks one of a collection of letters (or numbers, or ampersands) you give it to choose from. It then picks a single random font from your computer. Finally, using the colours and dimensions you define, it draws you a nice new wallpaper and tells Gnome to use it.
The script is written in PHP, and can be called from the command line. You can configure the options within the script or pass them as command line arguments. Instructions are in the file.
It requires PHP (command line version) and ImageMagick (probably version 6.3.5-7 or higher). And some fonts.
Get It!
It looks like this, and you can get the script from here (you'll need to change the extension to php to get it to run).
If you've not got very many fonts, and aren't sure how to get and install more, check out the Fonts section of the Ubuntu wiki.
14 Comments
Cool, I'll have a look and see if I can get this running on my setup. Thanks.
Btw seems you have a 'tyop' in you title ;).
#1, Joost Kiens, Thailand / Netherlands, 20 March 2010. Reply to this.
Really like the description of typographers that made me laugh as can think of a few people I have met like that! Great script too. Thank you for sharing.
#2, Logo Design Monster, UK, 23 March 2010. Reply to this.
This looks like a neat piece of script you have written. Hope i can get it to work.
thanks.
#3, Northampton Design, UK, 9 April 2010. Reply to this.
It took me sometime to figure out why the background is always 222222 and the Foreground is always 333333... But I got it now.
The scripts look really cool. Well done!
#4, Jhonas, 9 April 2010. Reply to this.
Thank you for sharing this. I get your script.
#5, Turkse Community, Netherlands, 13 April 2010. Reply to this.
Vey interesting stuff. But picking a random font might also be some arabic special character.
#6, Izdelava Strani, 14 April 2010. Reply to this.
What I always wanted...wallpapers with a "g" :-)
#7, Haarentfernung mit Wachs, 14 April 2010. Reply to this.
Wow!!! That's so cool. This script creates a lots of fun. I got it. Thanks for sharing.
#8, info info antelope, USA, 19 April 2010. Reply to this.
Thanks a lot. That ist really a great blog!!
#9, Laura, Germany, 19 April 2010. Reply to this.
Nice idea Dave! It won't work here because I'm using KDE4 but I was going to make changes to it to only use a given subset of fonts anyway...
#10, Thiago Cavalcanti, Brazil, 24 April 2010. Reply to this.
Great script, had some issues getting it running but it was definitely worthwhile!
#11, SJL Web Design, UK, 29 April 2010. Reply to this.
thanks for the share. awesome script
#12, travis, 27 June 2010. Reply to this.
I think this looks like really a great script for switching on the wallpapers whenever we like and to whatever we like on our desktop...I'd like to go through this script and see if I can customize it for my desktop as well..:)
#13, Robin Rozum Knight, United States, 28 August 2010. Reply to this.
Great script. Thanks!
#14, Milan Petrovic, Slovenia, 6 February 2011. Reply to this.