Vncdesk

Vncdesk was originally developed for scaling up applications on high DPI screens. Applications run in VNC desktops.

Usage

Configuration for each desktop goes into a numbered directory below ~/.vncdesk. For example the configuration in ~/.vncdesk/2/ can be run with:

vncdesk 2 Examples/nikke.fig

Optional arguments, here nikke.fig, are passed to the startup script which may pass it on to an application:

Files:

• settings.ini, by example:

  [desktop]
  width = 1024
  height = 768
  depth = 24
  
  [window]
  title = Xfig
  name = xfig in vncdesk
  class = FigInVncdesk
  scale_factor = 2
  smoothing = false

  The option depth is optional, and so is the entire section window.

  Consider that GDK 3 will also scale the VNC viewer via the environment variable GDK_SCALE. You may want to disable GDK scaling in case you run into display errors.

  Set smoothing to false to get rid of blur when scaling. This option requires gtk-vnc release 0.7.0 or newer.

• startup: Startup script, executable by the user.

  Environment variables provided:

  • WIDTH, HEIGHT: Desktop size.
  • DISPLAY: Display of the VNC server.
  • GUEST_DISPLAY: Display of the VNC client.
  • INVOCATION_DIR: Directory in which vncdesk was started.
  • Arguments passed when calling vncdesk.

  Examples:

  • Xfig in full screen mode:

    #!/bin/sh
    xrdb -merge Xresources
    cd "$INVOCATION_DIR"
    exec xfig -geometry ${WIDTH}x$HEIGHT+0+0 "$@"

  • Xfig in Fluxbox window manager:

    #!/bin/sh
    cd "$INVOCATION_DIR"
    exec fluxbox &
    xterm -e command

• Application specific files, for example Xresources:

  xfig*image_editor: DISPLAY=$GUEST_DISPLAY xdg-open
  xfig*pdfviewer: DISPLAY=$GUEST_DISPLAY xdg-open
  xfig*browser: DISPLAY=$GUEST_DISPLAY xdg-open

• .password: Generated every time anew, to password protect the connection also from other users on the same system.
• .Xauthority: Generated every time anew.

Installation

1. Download a release from GitHub.
2. Install dependencies:
   • Python_3
   • a compatible VNC server such as TigerVNC 1.4, TightVNC 1.3, or RealVNC 4.1
   • gtk-vnc 0.5 or compatible, with Python GTK+ 3 bindings

3. If you want to set up an explicit font path for the VNC server, at the same level as __init__.py create font_path.py. Example contents:

   font_path = ','.join(['/usr/share/fonts/misc/',
                         '/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/',
                         '/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/',
                         '/usr/share/fonts/Type1/'])

4. Run with sufficient permissions:

   python setup.py install

   Or, if you have pip:

   pip3 install .

Releasing a new version

• Test, e.g. by:

  pip3 install --upgrade --user .; ~/.local/bin/vncdesk 2

• Use versioning scheme: major.minor.patch
• Set version in: vncdesk/version.py
• Tag version in Git.

Coding convertions

• Maximum line length: 80 characters
• Comments in reStructuredText.

License

Except where noted otherwise, files are licensed under the WTFPL.

Copyright © 2015–2017 Felix E. Klee, with contributions by Robin Green, and Giorgio

This work is free. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See the COPYING file for more details.

d3des.py has been taken from Yusuke Shinyama’s vnc2flv version 20100207, then was modified for Python 3 compatibility.