I remember that little prank from the days I was a student. You work on an X terminal, and out of the blue, all the display contents gradually disappear’ Pixel after pixel turns black. But don’t worry – you’ll regain control over your display shortly. shortly.
Everyone can access other X terminal display, and mess with it.
How Does It Work?
This program is a simple one using the GDK library, Gnome’s window management package. Including ‘gdk.h’ will also include:
- Cairo – used for Graphics.
- GLib used for data structures and main event loop handling.
The Program’s Flow
The main function of the program performs the following steps:
1. Initialize GDK.
2. Create a window whose dimensions are the same as those of the root window.
3. Make the window’s background transparent.
4. Make the window a full-screen window.
5. Add an event handler. to handle Expose events.
The event handler will perform the following steps:
1. Create a list of columns and lengths (number of blackened pixels).
2. Create the Graphics Context for the window.
3. Blacken pixels until all pixels are black.
4. Quit the main loop.
Includes And Structures:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <gdk/gdk.h>
GMainLoop *mainloop;
GList *list;
typedef struct col_and_length_t{
short col; // Column number
short len; // Number of blackened pixels.
} col_and_length;`
The main function:
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
gdk_init(NULL, NULL);
GdkDisplay *disp=gdk_display_get_default();
GdkScreen *scr = gdk_display_get_default_screen (disp);
GdkWindow *root = gdk_screen_get_root_window(scr);
int rootWidth = gdk_window_get_width(root);
int rootHeight = gdk_window_get_height(root);
GdkWindowAttr attr;
attr.width=rootWidth;
attr.height=rootHeight;
attr.x=0;
attr.y=0;
attr.window_type = GDK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL;
attr.wclass=GDK_INPUT_OUTPUT;
GdkWindow *newWin=gdk_window_new(root,&attr, GDK_WA_X | GDK_WA_Y);
gdk_event_handler_set (eventFunc, newWin, NULL);
GdkRGBA color;
color.alpha=0;
gdk_window_set_background_rgba(newWin, &color);
gdk_window_fullscreen(newWin);
gdk_event_handler_set (eventFunc, newWin, NULL);
gdk_window_show(newWin);
mainloop = g_main_new (TRUE);
g_main_loop_run (mainloop);
gdk_display_close(disp);
return 0;
}
The event handler
void start_meltdown(GdkWindow *newWin, int height){
cairo_t *gc=gdk_cairo_create(newWin);
cairo_set_line_width(gc,2);
cairo_set_source_rgb (gc, 0, 0, 0);
int cell_no,size;
GList *link;
col_and_length *link_data;
size=g_list_length(list);
while(size>0){
cell_no=random() % size;
link = g_list_nth(list,cell_no);
link_data = (col_and_length *)link->data;
cairo_move_to(gc, link_data->col, link_data->len);
cairo_rel_line_to(gc, 0, 1);
cairo_stroke(gc);
link_data->len++;
if (link_data->len >= height){
list=g_list_remove_link(list, link);
--size;
}
}
g_main_loop_quit(mainloop);
}
void eventFunc(GdkEvent *evt, gpointer data){
GdkWindow *newWin = (GdkWindow *)data;
if (gdk_event_get_event_type(evt) == GDK_EXPOSE && gdk_event_get_window (evt) == newWin){
int width=gdk_window_get_width(newWin);
int height=gdk_window_get_height(newWin);
int i;
for (i=0; i<width;i++){
col_and_length *cell=(col_and_length *)calloc(sizeof(col_and_length), 1);
cell->col=i;
cell->len=0;
list = g_list_append(list, cell);
}
start_meltdown(newWin,height);
}
}
Compiling
In linux, compiling a program is easy thanks to the pkg-config command.
Run the following from the command line:
gcc meltdown.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gdk-3.0` -o meltdown
Now, to run the program type:
./meltdown
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