Ghosd is a library for flashing information to the screen in an attractive manner. The venerable XOSD has served many well, but I wanted something that looks flashier. To that end, Ghosd supports:
- (pseudo-)transparency, which means not only unneccessary graphical effects but also antialiased edges on fonts;
- Pango for high-quality text layout and rendering;
- Cairo for nice 2D graphics.
It's a tiny amount of code and available under the MIT license.
WARNING
This code is very new, and the API is likely to change. Do not expect it to be too nice yet.
How to get it
Download a release from the download directory.
This code is managed with darcs. Fetch it with
darcs get http://neugierig.org/software/darcs/ghosdor browse the source. Recent patches:
- (29 months ago) Fix memory leaks, and float arg; workaroun for redraw issue
- (29 months ago) make HACKING more clear
- (29 months ago) stdin, lines, age for ghosd-app
How to use it
See the GTK-doc output for API documentation. The distribution includes the examples pictured above and some others, like how to integrate with a glib (GTK) mainloop or how to do animation.
Movie
A screen-captured movie of an exaggerated fade-in. This program is three function calls using Ghosd.
ghosd.avi [426KB]
Screenshots
These screenshots are taken from example programs included in the Ghosd distribution. (I intentionally put some junk in the background so it's not so plain-looking.)
The text demo displays text:
Here's a close-up of the rendering:
The image demo shows how you might display an image:
