1 "Blorb" is a nonsense word from a popular early 1980s work of IF
2 called Enchanter where it was the name of a magic spell whose
3 purpose was to "safely protect a small object as though in a
4 strong box." In the late 1990s, the name was borrowed for a
5 standard format for what might be called the wrapping and
6 packaging of IF. A typical Blorb archive produced by Inform
7 contains the "story file" -- the actual program for the game --
8 together with its library card and cover art.
10 -- Graham Nelson in "Writing with Inform" (Chapter 23.4)
12 This program uses that cover art to generate thumbnail previews for
13 GNOME's file manager. I hope it will be useful to the devotee and the
16 DETAILS AND DEPENDENCIES
18 The command line utility "blorb-thumbnailer" uses the GDK-Pixbuf
19 library to load, scale, and save the cover in question. It's
20 accompanied by helper scripts and format specifications that tell
21 Nautilus (the file manager) how and when to invoke it.
23 To compile, you'll need a few pieces of infrastructure that don't
24 normally come with GNOME: gcc, make, pkg-config, and the GTK+
25 development headers. Translated for Debian or Ubuntu:
27 $ sudo apt-get build-essential libgtk2.0-dev
34 The second line installs the program and the manual; registers the
35 Blorb MIME type; and checks the appropriate keys into the GConf
36 settings database. To remove, unregister, and delete:
40 ISSUES AND LIMITATIONS
42 * There's no generic "blorb" icon to represent files without covers.
44 * URIs aren't supported. In theory you could be browsing, say, the IF
45 Archive, via FTP, in Nautilus, and it would attempt to provide
46 thumbnails. For now I'd say, use IFDB instead.
50 main.c main routine: option parsing and file handling
51 main.h common definitions
52 minblorb.c blorb-specific functions
53 thumb-gdk.c image handling
54 scripts/mass-thumbnailer test script
55 scripts/xdg-mime mimetype installation
56 scripts/install* installation helper script
57 blorb-thumbnailer.1 manual
58 blorb-thumbnailer.schemas gconf registry keys for GNOME 2
59 blorb.thumbnailer thumbnailer registration for GNOME 3
60 blorb.xml mimetype definition for application/x-blorb
61 debian/* packaging instructions for Debian
62 COPYING version 3 of the GNU GPL
63 Makefile compilation instructions
64 NEWS what's changed in this latest version
68 Lewis Gentry <8uuuuu@gmail.com>
69 http://lg.vblank.net/blorb/
73 GPLv3+ (see COPYING or <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>).
75 With one exception: the xdg-mime utility, which is released under an
76 Expat-style license; see "scripts/xdg-mime" for more information.