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ColdSpot 1.1.0

(http://www.bstern.org/coldspot/)

This is a silly little program to lock the screen when you're about to step away. It's based on a question in Jamie Zawinski's XScreenSaver FAQ (http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#sleep-corner) and seems to work pretty well for me.

This program is under the GNU Public License - see the file COPYING that ought to have accompanied this README.

There are two versions of this program; one of them uses GNU Autoconf, and as a result is a larger download (by 28K, compressed, in version 1.1.0). The other has an extremely trivial Makefile. I suggest you download the smaller version first and see if it works, if not, go ahead and get the other one.

If an overwhelming number of people would rather have one version over the other, I'll eventually drop support for the less popular version. This is, of course, assuming I get enough hits to determine "overwhelming" one way or the other.

Possible Gotchas:

• All it ever runs is xlock!

You need to create a .coldspotrc in your homedir. Put the following line into it:

Command: xscreensaver-command -activate

This will make coldspot run xscreensaver instead. You could put pretty much anything here; xclock, xsnow, whatever. I don't know how good an idea that is, since coldspot does not background itself or the programs it runs, but it's your computer.

• I unlock my screen and it locks again immediately!

You should move your mouse before unlocking the screen; otherwise coldspot gets a redraw event, wakes up, and sees the mouse is inside the window, and promptly locks the screen again. If you want to send me a clever patch, I'll be happy to toss it in.

• It goes off too quickly!

If for whatever reason one second is too short a period of time for you, add the line:

Sleep: 5

to make coldspot wait 5 seconds for the mouse to enter it. Feel free to use whatever value you want instead of 5.

• The program caused my computer to burst into flames and spew molten ceramic all over my bedroom!

Interesting - that's never happened to me. If something bad happens (even something much less disturbing, like a crash), and you can replicate it, please let me know. [Reread the GPL - no warranty, you get to keep both pieces if it breaks.]

Ben Stern
bstern@bstern.org