Other news are:

• Allow brightness to be adjusted (-b).
• Provide option to set color temperature directly (Joe Hillenbrand).
• Add option to show program version (-V).
• Add configure.ac option to install ubuntu icons. They will no longer be installed by default (Francesco Marella).
• config: Look in %userprofile%/.config/redshift.conf on windows platform.
• Fix: w32gdi: Obtain a new DC handle on every adjustment. This fixes a bug where redshift stops updating the screen.

So you’ve just created a Flattr account and now you can’t find anything to flattr? Are you using free software every day? Raphaël Hertzog (of Debian fame) is running a monthly Flattr FOSS newsletter where he recommends free software to flattr. You can see all the previous newsletter posts here.

If you don’t know what Flattr is, have a look here.

• ar_crc: Calculate AccurateRip checksums the naive way (for one offset) and for frame 450.
• ckcdda: Calculate AccurateRip checksums for all offsets (only offset 0 is actually printed).
• eac_crc32: Calculate EAC CRC32 both with and without silent samples.

The code is the documentation, but it should be easy enough to follow. The tools read raw CD audio data from stdin. Track lengths must be given in sector size.

<raw audio output> | ar_crc <offset> <track 1 length> .. <track N length>
<raw audio output> | ckcdda <track 1 length> .. <track N length>
<raw audio output> | eac_crc32

The raw audio output can for example be produced from FLAC files in the following manner:

flac --decode --stdout --force-raw-format --endian=little --sign=signed Track*.flac

• Support for optional configuration file (fixes #590722).
• Add man page for redshift written by Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (fixes #582196).
• Explain in help output that 6500K is the neutral color temperature (fixes #627113).
• Fix: Handle multiple instances of the GNOME clock applet; contributed by Francesco Marella (fixes #610860).
• Fix: Redshift crashes when VidMode fails (fixes #657451).
• Fix: Toggle menu item should not be of class gtk.ImageMenuItem (fixes #620355).
• New translations and translation updates: Lithuanian (Aurimas Fišeras); Brazilian Portuguese (Matteus Sthefano Leite da Silva); Finnish (Jani Välimaa); Italian (Simone Sandri); French (Emilien Klein); Russian (Anton Chernyshov).

Looking forward to 1.6.1

I hope to release Redshift 1.6.1 before the end of the month. It will include some small bug fixes, updated documentation and updated translations, but for this to happen I will need your help:

• Please help get the translations finished for 1.6.1 if you are fluent in one of the languages that Redshift has been translated to. The text strings will not change before 1.6.1.
• Are you familiar with writing man pages? Please help document the configuration file syntax (#662632).

Configuration file

Redshift will look for a configuration file in “~/.config/redshift.conf” (or in XDG_CONFIG_HOME if that has been set). A different configuration file can be loaded with the command line option “-c”. Here is an example:

; Global settings
[redshift]
temp-day=5700
temp-night=3500
transition=1
gamma=0.8:0.7:0.8
location-provider=manual
adjustment-method=vidmode

; The location provider and adjustment method settings
; are in their own sections.
[manual]
lat=55.0
lon=12.0

; In this example screen 1 is adjusted by vidmode. Note
; that the numbering starts from 0, so this is actually
; the second screen.
[vidmode]
screen=1

There are workarounds, but you will not find them anywhere unless you have the patience to work your way through assembly listings of Windows DLLs. So here they are, for your convenience; these two tricks will work at least on a Windows 7 machine:

• Go to the registry database and create the key “GdiIcmGammaRange” (that’s a capital I in Icm as in Image Color Management) under “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ICM”. The type must be DWORD. The value determines the amount of adjustment that can be made, where 0 means no adjustments possible at all, and 256 means any adjustment is allowed. You’ll find a REG-file below that sets it to 256.
• Run your program from the Local System account.

The registry key should be set as shown in this screen shot.

So if you want to run the experimental build of Redshift on Windows, you need to use one of the above methods if you want to use the same color temperatures as are available on the linux version.

Update: Here’s a REG-file that will set the appropriate key in the registry: RemoveGammaLimitation.reg. Save it with a “.reg” extension and double click to apply.

• Application launcher and autostart feature contributed by Francesco Marella (fixes #590550, #612710).
• Improve GNOME location provider (patch by Gabriel de Perthuis) (fixes #598277).
• New ubuntu-mono-dark icons that fit the color guidelines better. Contributed by aleth (semi-fixes #596536).
• Improve error message when first adjustment method fails (fixes #596537).
• Translation updates: Basque (Ibai Oihanguren); Chinese (Jonathan Lumb);
  French (Hangman, XioNoX); German (Jan-Christoph Borchardt); Hebrew
  (dotancohen); Spanish (Fernando Ossandon)

Thank you contributors and donators! (btw, the donation will be spent on hosting for this website).

• Command line options for color adjustment methods changed. Procedure for setting specific screen (-s) or CRTC (-c) changed. See redshift -h for more information.
• Automatically obtain the location from the GNOME Clock applet if possible.
• Add application indicator GUI (by Francesco Marella) (fixes #588086).
• Add reset option (-x) that removes any color adjustment applied. Based on patch by Dan Helfman (fixes #590777).
• configure options for GUI changed; see configure --help for more information.
• New translations: German (Jan-Christoph Borchardt), Italian (Andrea Amoroso), Czech (clever_fox), Spanish (Fernando Ossandon), Finnish (Ilari Oras).

UPDATE: 1.4.1 released. It includes mono icons for Ubuntu (by Joern Konopka); the status icon toggles to show whether Redshift is on or off; and it has updated translations: Spanish (Fernando Ossandon), Russian (Чистый).

Here’s a quick preview of something I’ve been working on.

As you can see, it uses the graphics from the original game. It is beginning to approach a state where it’s actually playable. Here’s some more screens for your viewing pleasure:

The tiles were created with this python script:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, math
import cairo

if __name__ == '__main__':
    master = cairo.ImageSurface.create_from_png(sys.argv[1])
    dest_width = int(sys.argv[2]) if len(sys.argv) > 2 else 256
    dest_height = int(sys.argv[3]) if len(sys.argv) > 3 else 256
    min_zoom = int(sys.argv[4]) if len(sys.argv) > 4 else 0
    max_zoom = int(sys.argv[5]) if len(sys.argv) > 5 else 0

    vert_tiles = (master.get_width() + dest_width-1) / dest_width
    horiz_tiles = (master.get_height() + dest_height-1) / dest_height

    most_tiles = max(vert_tiles, horiz_tiles)
    base_zoom = int(math.ceil(math.log(most_tiles) / math.log(2)))

    if max_zoom == 0:
        print('Image dimensions: %ux%u' % (master.get_width(), master.get_height()))
        print('Tile dimensions: %ux%u' % (dest_width, dest_height))
        print('Tiles in base zoom: %ux%u' % (vert_tiles, horiz_tiles))
        print('Base zoom level: %u' % base_zoom)
        print('Run with min_zoom and max_zoom parameters to produce tiles.')
        sys.exit(0)

    for z in range(min_zoom, max_zoom+1):
        scale = 2**(z - base_zoom)

        src_width = dest_width * 2**(base_zoom - z)
        src_height = dest_height * 2**(base_zoom - z)

        vert_tiles = int(math.floor((master.get_width() + src_width-1) / src_width))
        horiz_tiles = int(math.floor((master.get_height() + src_height-1) / src_height))
        print('Zoom level %u (tiles: %ux%u)' % (z, vert_tiles, horiz_tiles))

        for y in range(horiz_tiles):
            for x in range(vert_tiles):
                tile = cairo.ImageSurface(cairo.FORMAT_ARGB32, dest_width, dest_height)
                ctx = cairo.Context(tile)

                pattern = cairo.SurfacePattern(master)
                pattern.set_filter(cairo.FILTER_BEST)
                pattern.set_matrix(cairo.Matrix(xx=1.0/scale,
                                                yy=1.0/scale,
                                                x0=x*dest_width/scale,
                                                y0=y*dest_height/scale))

                ctx.set_source(pattern)
                ctx.rectangle(0, 0, dest_width, dest_height)
                ctx.fill()

                print('+ tile-%u-%ux%u.png' % (z, x, y))
                tile.write_to_png('tile-%u-%ux%u.png' % (z, x, y))

It will convert a PNG image to PNG tiles. The script depends on pycairo to do the cutting and scaling of the images. This example converts master.png to tiles of size 256×256 with 1 being the minimum zoom level and 4 being the maximum zoom:

$ pngmaptiler.py master.png 256 256 1 4