NAME¶
FIGlet - display large characters made up of ordinary screen characters
SYNOPSIS¶
figlet [
-cklnoprstvxDELNRSWX ] [
-d fontdirectory ]
- [ -f fontfile ] [ -m layoutmode
]
- [ -w outputwidth ] [ -C
controlfile ]
- [ -I infocode ] [ message ]
DESCRIPTION¶
FIGlet prints its input using large characters (called
``FIGcharacters'')made up of ordinary screen characters (called
``sub-characters'').
FIGlet output is generally reminiscent of the sort
of ``signatures'' many people like to put at the end of e-mail and UseNet
messages. It is also reminiscent of the output of some banner programs,
although it is oriented normally, not sideways.
FIGlet can print in a variety of fonts, both left-to-right and
right-to-left, with adjacent FIGcharacters kerned and ``smushed'' together in
various ways.
FIGlet fonts are stored in separate files, which can be
identified by the suffix ``
.flf''. In systems with UTF-8 support
FIGlet may also support TOIlet ``
.tlf'' fonts. Most
FIGlet font files will be stored in
FIGlet's default font
directory.
FIGlet can also use ``control files'', which tell it to map certain input
characters to certain other characters, similar to the Unix
tr command.
Control files can be identified by the suffix ``
.flc''. Most
FIGlet control files will be stored in
FIGlet's default font
directory.
You can store
FIGlet fonts and control files in compressed form. See
COMPRESSED FONTS.
USAGE¶
Just start up
FIGlet (type ``
figlet'') and then type whatever you
want. Alternatively, pipe a file or the output of another command through
FIGlet, or put input on the command line after the options. See
EXAMPLES for other things to do.
OPTIONS¶
FIGlet reads command line options from left to right, and only the last
option that affects a parameter has any effect. Almost every option has an
inverse, so that, for example, if
FIGlet is customized with a shell
alias, all the options are usually still available.
Commonly-used options are
-f,
-c,
-k,
-t,
-p
and
-v.
- -f fontfile
- Select the font. The .flf suffix may be left off of
fontfile, in which case FIGlet automatically appends it.
FIGlet looks for the file first in the default font directory and
then in the current directory, or, if fontfile was given as a full
pathname, in the given directory. If the -f option is not
specified, FIGlet uses the font that was specified when it was
compiled. To find out which font this is, use the -I3 option.
- -d fontdirectory
- Change the default font directory. FIGlet looks for
fonts first in the default directory and then in the current directory. If
the -d option is not specified, FIGlet uses the directory
that was specified when it was compiled. To find out which directory this
is, use the -I2 option.
- -c
- -l
- -r
- -x
- These options handle the justification of FIGlet
output. -c centers the output horizontally. -l makes the
output flush-left. -r makes it flush-right. -x (default)
sets the justification according to whether left-to-right or right-to-left
text is selected. Left-to-right text will be flush-left, while
right-to-left text will be flush-right. (Left-to-right versus
right-to-left text is controlled by -L, -R and -X.)
- -t
- -w outputwidth
- These options control the outputwidth, or the screen
width FIGlet assumes when formatting its output. FIGlet uses
the outputwidth to determine when to break lines and how to center
the output. Normally, FIGlet assumes 80 columns so that people with
wide terminals won't annoy the people they e-mail FIGlet output to.
-t sets the outputwidth to the terminal width. If the
terminal width cannot be determined, the previous outputwidth is
retained. -w sets the outputwidth to the given integer. An
outputwidth of 1 is a special value that tells FIGlet to
print each non-space FIGcharacter, in its entirety, on a separate line, no
matter how wide it is.
- -p
- -n
- These options control how FIGlet handles newlines.
-p puts FIGlet into ``paragraph mode'', which eliminates
some unnecessary line breaks when piping a multi-line file through
FIGlet. In paragraph mode, FIGlet treats line breaks within
a paragraph as if they were merely blanks between words. (Specifically,
-p causes FIGlet to convert any newline which is not
preceded by a newline and not followed by a space character into a blank.)
-n (default) puts FIGlet back to normal, in which every
newline FIGlet reads causes it to produce a line break.
- -D
- -E
- -D switches to the German (ISO 646-DE) character
set. Turns `[', `\' and `]' into umlauted A, O and U, respectively. `{',
`|' and `}' turn into the respective lower case versions of these. `~'
turns into s-z. -E turns off -D processing. These options
are deprecated, which means they probably will not appear in the next
version of FIGlet.
- -C controlfile
- -N
- These options deal with FIGlet controlfiles.
A controlfile is a file containing a list of commands that
FIGlet executes each time it reads a character. These commands can
map certain input characters to other characters, similar to the Unix
tr command or the FIGlet -D option. FIGlet
maintains a list of controlfiles, which is empty when FIGlet
starts up. -C adds the given controlfile to the list.
-N clears the controlfile list, cancelling the effect of any
previous -C. FIGlet executes the commands in all
controlfiles in the list. See the file figfont.txt, provided
with FIGlet, for details on how to write a controlfile.
- -s
- -S
- -k
- -W
- -o
- These options control how FIGlet spaces the
FIGcharacters that it outputs. -s (default) and -S cause
``smushing''. The FIGcharacters are displayed as close together as
possible, and overlapping sub-characters are removed. Exactly which
sub-characters count as ``overlapping'' depends on the font's
layoutmode, which is defined by the font's author. -k causes
``kerning''. As many blanks as possible are removed between FIGcharacters,
so that they touch, but the FIGcharacters are not smushed. -W makes
FIGlet display all FIGcharacters at their full width, which may be
fixed or variable, depending on the font.
The difference between -s and -S is that -s will not
smush a font whose author specified kerning or full width as the default
layoutmode, whereas -S will attempt to do so.
If there is no information in the font about how to smush, or if the
-o option is specified, then the FIGcharacters are ``overlapped''.
This means that after kerning, the first subcharacter of each FIGcharacter
is removed. (This is not done if a FIGcharacter contains only one
subcharacter.)
- -m layoutmode
- Specifies an explicit layoutmode between 1
and 63. Smushmodes are explained in figfont.txt,
which also provides complete information on the format of a FIGlet
font. For the sake of backward compatibility with versions of
FIGlet before 2.2, -m0 is equivalent to -k,
-m-1 is equivalent to -W, and -m-2 is equivalent to
-s. The -m switch is normally used only by font designers
testing the various layoutmodes with a new font.
- -v
- -I infocode
- These options print various information about
FIGlet, then exit. If several of these options are given on the
command line, only the last is executed, and only after all other
command-line options have been dealt with.
-v prints version and copyright information, as well as a ``Usage:
...'' line. -I prints the information corresponding to the given
infocode in a consistent, reliable (i.e., guaranteed to be the same
in future releases) format. -I is primarily intended to be used by
programs that use FIGlet. infocode can be any of the
following.
- -1 Normal operation (default).
- This infocode indicates that FIGlet should
operate normally, not giving any informational printout, printing its
input in the selected font.
- 0 Version and copyright.
- This is identical to -v.
- 1 Version (integer).
- This will print the version of your copy of FIGlet
as a decimal integer. The main version number is multiplied by 10000, the
sub-version number is multiplied by 100, and the sub-sub-version number is
multiplied by 1. These are added together, and the result is printed out.
For example, FIGlet 2.2 will print ``20200'' , version 2.2.1
will print ``20201''. Similarly, version 3.7.2 would print
``30702''. These numbers are guaranteed to be ascending, with later
versions having higher numbers. Note that the first major release of
FIGlet, version 2.0, did not have the -I option.
- 2 Default font directory.
- This will print the default font directory. It is affected
by the -d option.
- 3 Font.
- This will print the name of the font FIGlet would
use. It is affected by the -f option. This is not a filename; the
``.flf'' suffix is not printed.
- 4 Output width.
- This will print the value FIGlet would use for
outputwidth, the number of columns wide FIGlet assumes the
screen is. It is affected by the -w and -t options.
- 5 Supported font formats.
- This will list font formats supported by FIGlet .
Possible formats are ``flf2'' for FIGfont Version 2 .flf
files and ``tlf2'' for TOIlet .tlf files.
- If infocode is any other positive value,
FIGlet will simply exit without printing anything.
- -L
- -R
- -X
- These options control whether FIGlet prints
left-to-right or right-to-left. -L selects left-to-right printing.
-R selects right-to-left printing. -X (default) makes
FIGlet use whichever is specified in the font file.
Once the options are read, if there are any remaining words on the command
line, they are used instead of standard input as the source of text. This
feature allows shell scripts to generate large letters without having to
dummy up standard input files.
An empty argument, obtained by two sequential quotes, results in a line
break.
EXAMPLES¶
To use
FIGlet with its default settings, simply type
and then type whatever you like.
To change the font, use the
-f option, for example,
example% figlet -f script
Use the
-c option if you would prefer centered output:
We have found that the most common use of
FIGlet is making up large text
to be placed in e-mail messages. For this reason,
FIGlet defaults to 80
column output. If you are using a wider terminal, and would like
FIGlet
to use the full width of your terminal, use the
-t option:
If you don't want
FIGlet to smush FIGcharacters into each other, use the
-k option:
If
figlet gets its input from a file, it is often a good idea to use
-p:
example% figlet -p < myfile
Of course, the above can be combined:
example% figlet -ptk -f shadow < anotherfile
example% figlet -cf slant
Finally, if you want to have
FIGlet take the input from the command line
instead of a file:
example% figlet Hello world
Other Things to Try¶
On many systems nice effects can be obtained from the
lean font by piping
it through
tr. Some you might want to try are the following:
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' ' ()'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' './\\'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' ' //'
example% figlet -f lean | tr ' _/' '/ '
Similar things can be done with the
block font and many of the other
FIGlet fonts.
COMPRESSED FONTS¶
You can compress the fonts and controlfiles using the
zip archiving
program. Place only one font or controlfile in each archive, and rename the
archive file (which will have a name ending in
.zip) back to
.flf or
.flc as the case may be. If you don't rename the file
appropriately,
FIGlet won't be able to find it.
FIGlet does not care what the filename within the
.zip archive is,
and will process only the first file.
The
.zip format was chosen because tools to create and manipulate it are
widely available for free on many platforms.
THE STANDARD FONTS¶
Here are a few notes about some of the fonts provided with
FIGlet. You
can get many other font from the Web site
http://www.figlet.org/ This location should also contain the latest version of
FIGlet and other related utilities.
The font
standard is the basic
FIGlet font, used when no other
font is specified. (This default can be changed when
FIGlet is compiled
on your system.) The
controlfiles 8859-2,
8859-3,
8859-4, and
8859-9 are provided for interpreting those character
sets, also known as ISO Latin-2 through Latin-5 respectively. The character
set 8859-1 (ISO Latin-1) is
FIGlet's default and requires no special
controlfile.
Closely related are the fonts
slant,
shadow,
small,
smslant (both small and slanted),
smshadow, (both small and
shadowed), and
big. These fonts support only Latin-1, except that
big supports Greek FIGcharacters as well; the
controlfiles
frango (for Greek text written in Latin characters, so-called
``
frangovlakhika''), and
8859-7 (for mixed Latin/Greek text) are
provided.
The
ivrit font is a right-to-left font including both Latin and Hebrew
FIGcharacters; the Latin characters are those of the
standard font. The
available
controlfiles are
ilhebrew, which maps the letters you
get by typing on a U.S. keyboard as if it were a Hebrew keyboard;
ushebrew, which makes a reasonable mapping from Latin letters to Hebrew
ones; and
8859-8, which supports mixed Latin/Hebrew text.
Warning: FIGlet doesn't support bidirectional text, so
everything will come out right-to-left, even Latin letters.
The fonts
terminal,
digital, and
bubble output the input
character with some decoration around it (or no decoration, in the case of
terminal). The characters coded 128 to 159, which have varying
interpretations, are output as-is. You can use the appropriate
controlfiles to process Latin-2, Latin-3, or Latin-4 (but not Latin-5)
text, provided your output device has screen or printer fonts that are
appropriate for these character sets.
Two script fonts are available:
script, which is larger than
standard, and
smscript, which is smaller.
The font
lean is made up solely of `/' and `_' sub-characters;
block is a straight (non-leaning) version of it.
The font
mini is very small, and especially suitable for e-mail
signatures.
The font
banner looks like the output of the
banner program; it is
a capitals and small capitals font that doesn't support the ISO Latin-1
extensions to plain ASCII. It does, however, support the Japanese
katakana syllabary; the
controlfile uskata maps the
upper-case and lower-case Latin letters into the 48 basic
katakana
characters, and the
controlfile jis0201 handles JIS 0201X
(JIS-Roman) mixed Latin and
katakana text. Furthermore, the
banner font also supports Cyrillic (Russian) FIGcharacters; the
controlfile 8859-5 supports mixed Latin and Cyrillic text, the
controlfile koi8r supports the popular KOI8-R mapping of mixed
text, and the
controlfile moscow supports a sensible mapping
from Latin to Cyrillic, compatible with the
moscow font (not supplied).
The fonts
mnemonic and
safemnem support the mnemonic character set
documented in RFC 1345. They implement a large subset of Unicode (over 1800
characters) very crudely, using ASCII-based mnemonic sequences, and are good
for getting a quick look at UTF-8 unicode files, using the controlfile
utf8.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- FIGLET_FONTDIR
- If $FIGLET_FONTDIR is set, its value is used as a
path to search for font files.
FILES¶
- file.flf
- FIGlet font file
- file.flc
- FIGlet control file
DIAGNOSTICS¶
FIGlet's diagnostics are intended to be self-explanatory. Possible
messages are
Usage: ...
Out of memory
Unable to open font file
Not a FIGlet 2 font file
Unable to open control file
Not a FIGlet 2 control file
"-t" is disabled, since ioctl is not fully implemented.
This last message is printed when the
-t option is given, but the
operating system in use does not include the system call
FIGlet uses to
determine the terminal width.
FIGlet also prints an explanatory message if the
-F option is
given on the command line. The earlier version of
FIGlet, version 2.0,
listed the available fonts when the
-F option was given. This option
has been removed from
FIGlet 2.1. It has been replaced by the
figlist script, which is part of the standard
FIGlet package.
ORIGIN¶
``
FIGlet'' stands for ``Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters''. Inspired by
Frank's .sig, Glenn wrote (most of) it, and Ian helped.
Most of the standard
FIGlet fonts were inspired by signatures on various
UseNet articles. Since typically hundreds of people use the same style of
letters in their signatures, it was often not deemed necessary to give credit
to any one font designer.
BUGS¶
Very little error checking is done on font and control files. While
FIGlet tries to be forgiving of errors, and should (hopefully) never
actually crash, using an improperly-formatted file with
FIGlet will
produce unpredictable output.
FIGlet does not handle format characters in a very intelligent way. A tab
character is converted to a blank, and vertical-tab, form-feed and
carriage-return are each converted to a newline. On many systems, tabs can be
handled better by piping files through
expand before piping through
FIGlet.
FIGlet output is quite ugly if it is displayed in a proportionally-spaced
font. I suppose this is to be expected.
Please report any errors you find in this man page or the program to
<info@figlet.org>
WEBSITE AND MAILING LIST¶
You can get many fonts which are not in the basic
FIGlet package from the
Web site
http://www.figlet.org/ It should also contain the latest version of
FIGlet and other utilities related to
FIGlet.
There is a mailing list for
FIGlet for general discussions about
FIGlet and a place where you can ask questions or share ideas with
other
FIGlet users. It is also the place where we will publish news
about new fonts, new software updates etc.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the
FIGlet mailing list, please send
email to figlet-subscribe@figlet.org or figlet-unsubscribe@figlet.org or visit
the following web page:
http://www.figlet.org/mailman/listinfo/figlet
AUTHORS¶
Glenn Chappell did most of the work. You can e-mail him but he is not an e-mail
fanatic; people who e-mail Glenn will probably get answers, but if you e-mail
his best friend:
Ian Chai, who
is an e-mail fanatic, you'll get answers, endless
conversation about the mysteries of life, invitations to join some 473 mailing
lists and a free toaster. (Well, ok, maybe not the free toaster.)
Frank inspired this whole project with his .sig, but don't e-mail him; he's
decidedly an un-e-mail-fanatic.
Gilbert "The Mad Programmer" Healton added the
-A option for
version 2.1.1. This option specified input from the command line; it is still
allowed, but has no effect.
John Cowan added the
-o,
-s,
-k,
-S, and
-W
options, and the support for Unicode mapping tables, ISO
2022/HZ/Shift-JIS/UTF-8 input, and compressed fonts and control files. He also
revised this documentation, with a lot of input from Paul Burton.
Claudio Matsuoka added the support for
.tlf files for version 2.2.4 and
performs random hacks and bugfixes.
As a fan of FIGlet, Christiaan Keet revised the official FIGlet documentation
and set up the new FIGlet website at
http://www.figlet.org/ (and the
corresponding
ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/)
SEE ALSO¶
figlist(6),
chkfont(6),
showfigfonts(6),
toilet(1)