Command line popup with image

[Guillaume Dargaud]

Hello all,
I'd like to have a popup from a shell script that presents an image and asks
a simple [Yes/No] question. Something like "Is this the right image?"

I've looked at zenity and kdialog and I don't see any possibility to display
an image withing the dialog. Did I miss something or should I use another
popup tool ?

Thanks
--
Guillaume Dargaud
http://www.gdargaud.net/

[Janis Papanagnou]

On 19.12.2012 11:41, Guillaume Dargaud wrote:
> Hello all,
> I'd like to have a popup from a shell script that presents an image and asks
> a simple [Yes/No] question. Something like "Is this the right image?"
>
> I've looked at zenity and kdialog and I don't see any possibility to display
> an image withing the dialog. Did I miss something or should I use another
> popup tool ?

Not sure what you're trying to do with the displayed image. Does this help...

VIEWER=gthumb # for example; use any viewer you like
IMAGE=someimage.png # whatever image
"$VIEWER" "$IMAGE" &
pid=$!
read yn?"is this the right image? "
printf "%s\n" "$yn"
kill "$pid"


Janis

>
> Thanks
>

[Guillaume Dargaud]

Hello Janis,

yes it's pretty close to what I want, but the focus is shifted to the image,
forcing to alternate clic and keypress. I'd rather have a mouse only
solution (for instance with [Yes]/[No] buttons) or keyboard only.

If there is a way to tell the terminal window to stay in focus, that'd do.

[Ben Bacarisse]

Guillaume Dargaud <use_the_co...@www.gdargaud.net> writes:

> Hello all,
> I'd like to have a popup from a shell script that presents an image and asks
> a simple [Yes/No] question. Something like "Is this the right image?"
>
> I've looked at zenity and kdialog and I don't see any possibility to display
> an image withing the dialog. Did I miss something or should I use another
> popup tool ?

I think you can, just about, do it with zenity. The key is to use a
text-info dialog with HTML as the text format:

zenity --text-info --html --filename=...

(you can add a "this is the right image" checkbox if you like).

However, there are two catches: (1) you must use a file name, and (2)
you don't seem to be able to use local file references in the image tag
(i.e. <img src="file:///home/ben/pic.jpg"> does not work).

If you want to avoid creating a temporary file you can get round (1)
using a trick like /dev/stdin provided your system supports it. To get
round (2) you can use an inline data URL. These look like this:

src="data:image/jpg;base64,...".

Here's an example:

(echo "<h1>Is this the right image?</h1><img src=\"data:"
mimetype -b "$1"
echo -n ";base64,"
base64 "$1"
echo "\">") | zenity --text-info --html --filename=/dev/stdin

--
Ben.

[Guillaume Dargaud]

Hello Ben,

> I think you can, just about, do it with zenity. The key is to use a
> text-info dialog with HTML as the text format:
>
> zenity --text-info --html --filename=...

--html is not in the man page, so I would never have found that out.

> (you can add a "this is the right image" checkbox if you like).
>
> However, there are two catches: (1) you must use a file name, and (2)
> you don't seem to be able to use local file references in the image tag
> (i.e. <img src="file:///home/ben/pic.jpg"> does not work).
>
> If you want to avoid creating a temporary file you can get round (1)
> using a trick like /dev/stdin provided your system supports it. To get
> round (2) you can use an inline data URL. These look like this:

Nice trick with stdin, I would have tried something with --filename=<(...)

> src="data:image/jpg;base64,...".

I was vaguely aware of the possibility to inline binary code in html, but
I'd never used it.

> Here's an example:
>
> (echo "<h1>Is this the right image?</h1><img src=\"data:"
> mimetype -b "$1"
> echo -n ";base64,"
> base64 "$1"
> echo "\">") | zenity --text-info --html --filename=/dev/stdin

Thanks a lot, your example is spot on and it's great because with the html I
don't need to perform image processing beforehand to adjust the sizes.

I modified it to do what I wanted, a simple image compare popup:

# Call this with two file names
Size=300
Style=" STYLE=\"max-width:$Size; max-height:$Size\""
function Identical() {
(echo "<TABLE><TR><TD STYLE=\"width:100%; margin:0px auto;\"><IMG$Style
SRC=\"data:"

mimetype -b "$1"
echo -n ";base64,"
base64 "$1"

echo "\"></TD><TD><IMG$Style SRC=\"data:"
mimetype -b "$2"
echo -n ";base64,"
base64 "$2"
echo "\"></TD></TR></TABLE>"
) |
zenity --ok-label=Identical --cancel-label=Different --width=$(($Size*2+50))
--height=$(($Size+100)) --title="Are those two images identical?" --text-
info --html --filename=/dev/stdin;

[Ben Bacarisse]

Guillaume Dargaud <use_the_co...@www.gdargaud.net> writes:

>> I think you can, just about, do it with zenity. The key is to use a
>> text-info dialog with HTML as the text format:
>>
>> zenity --text-info --html --filename=...
>
> --html is not in the man page, so I would never have found that out.

So I see! I found out about it by reading the online manual at the
Gnome website; and I only went there just because I find the format of
the zeinity man page a little hard to follow. A happy accident as it
turns out. If I get time, I might try to find the man page and submit a
patch.

>> (you can add a "this is the right image" checkbox if you like).
>>
>> However, there are two catches: (1) you must use a file name, and (2)
>> you don't seem to be able to use local file references in the image tag
>> (i.e. <img src="file:///home/ben/pic.jpg"> does not work).
>>
>> If you want to avoid creating a temporary file you can get round (1)
>> using a trick like /dev/stdin provided your system supports it. To get
>> round (2) you can use an inline data URL. These look like this:
>
> Nice trick with stdin, I would have tried something with
> --filename=<(...)

It just depends on whether you want to rely on a shell feature or a
system feature.

Over the years I've used zeninty quite a bit, and I find the design a
little annoying at times. The fact that a text-info dialogue won't read
standard input seems like an odd decision.

<snip>
--
Ben.