So today I stumbled upon a motherload of amazing 3D space art at http://joejesus.deviantart.com and I go completely gaga over space art.. My wallpapers are all sci-fi scenes, I just can’t get over how breath taking some of these are.  So I raided the guys stash and ended up with around 30-40 new pieces for my wallpaper slideshow and like hell was I going to enter all of these in by hand so off I went searching for a nice little script that would do it for me.  I mean come on, one of the reasons I’m a linux user because I gave up the notion that time consuming repetitive tasks were something that you had to do by hand and sure enough I found a wonderful gentlemen over at the ubuntu forums who coded up a beauty of a script that worked like a charm.  So make sure to head over to : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9578962 and give the guy a big thank you hug for saving you hours of work, and read the instructions on how to use it.

Here’s the script, just copy and paste this into a file, chmod it to 755 and you’re off to the races:

#!/bin/sh
#This script creates xml files that can act as dynamic wallpapers for Gnome by referring to multiple wallpapers
#Coded by David J Krajnik
if [ "$*" = "" ]; then
  echo "This script creates xml files that can act as dynamic backgrounds for Gnome by referring to multiple wallpapers";
  echo "Usage: mkwlppr.sh target-file.xml [duration] pic1 pic2 [pic3 .. picN]";
else
  files=$*;
  #Grab the name of the target xml file
  xmlfile=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;
  #remove the first item from $files
  files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
  if [ "`echo $xmlfile | grep '\.xml$'`" = "" ]; then
    echo "Your target file must be an XML file";
  else
    inputIsValid="true";
    firstItem=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;
    duration="1795.0";#set the default duration
    if [ "`echo $firstItem | grep '^[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+$'`" != "" ]; then
      echo "The duration must be an integer";
      files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
      inputIsValid="";
    elif [ "`echo $firstItem | grep '^[0-9]\+$'`" != "" ]; then
      #If the item is a number, then use it as the duration for each wallpaper image
      duration="`expr $firstItem - 5`.0";
      #remove the duration from the list of files
      files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;
    fi
    if [ "$files" = "" ]; then
      echo "You must enter image files to associate with the XML file";
    else
      for file in $files
      do
        if [ ! -f $file ]; then
	  echo "\"$file\" does not exist";
	  inputIsValid="";
        elif [ "`echo $file | sed 's/^.*\.\(jpg\|jpeg\|bmp\|png\|gif\|tif\|tiff\|jif\|jfif\|jp2\|jpx\|j2k\|j2c\)$//'`" != "" ]; then
	  echo "\"$file\" is not an image file";
	  inputIsValid="";
	fi
      done
      if [ $inputIsValid ]; then
        currDir=`pwd`;
        echo "<background>" >> $xmlfile
        echo "  <starttime>\n    <year>2009</year>\n    <month>08</month>\n    <day>04</day>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "    <hour>00</hour>\n    <minute>00</minute>\n    <second>00</second>\n  </starttime>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "  <!-- This animation will start at midnight. -->" >> $xmlfile;
        firstFile=`echo $files | cut -d " " -f 1`;#grab the first item
        if [ "`echo $firstFile | sed 's/\(.\).*/\1/'`" != "/" ]; then
          #If the first character in the filename is not '/', then it is a relative path and must have the current directory's path appended
          firstFile="$currDir/$firstFile";
        fi
        firstFile=`echo $firstFile | sed 's/[^/]\+\/\.\.\/\?//g'`;#Remove occurrences of ".." from the filepath
        files=`echo $files | sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//'`;#remove the first item
        prevFile=$firstFile;
        currFile="";
        #TODO add absolute path to the filenames
        #if $currFile =~ "^/.*" then the file needs to path appended
        echo "  <static>\n    <duration>$duration</duration>\n    <file>$firstFile</file>\n  </static>" >> $xmlfile;
        for currFile in $files
        do
          if [ "`echo $currFile | sed 's/\(.\).*/\1/'`" != "/" ]; then
            #If the first character in the filename is not '/', then it is a relative path and must have the current directory's path appended
            currFile="$currDir/$currFile";
          fi
          currFile=`echo $currFile | sed 's/[^/]\+\/\.\.\/\?//g'`;#Remove occurrences of ".." from the filepath
          echo "  <transition>\n    <duration>5.0</duration>\n    <from>$prevFile</from>\n    <to>$currFile</to>\n  </transition>" >> $xmlfile;
          echo "  <static>\n    <duration>$duration</duration>\n    <file>$currFile</file>\n  </static>" >> $xmlfile;
          prevFile=$currFile;
        done
        echo "  <transition>\n    <duration>5.0</duration>\n    <from>$currFile</from>\n    <to>$firstFile</to>\n  </transition>" >> $xmlfile;
        echo "</background>" >> $xmlfile;
      fi
    fi
  fi
fi