path: root/figlet.6

.\"  FIGlet
.\"  Copyright (C) 1991, 1993, 1994 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai
.\"  Internet: <info@figlet.org>
.\"  Portions Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 by John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
.\"  Portions Copyright 2002 by Christiaan Keet
.\"  Portions Copyright 2011 by Claudio Matsuoka
.\"  FIGlet, along with the various FIGlet fonts and documentation, may
.\"  be freely copied and distributed.
.\"  If you use FIGlet, please send an e-mail message to
.\"  <info@figlet.org>
.\"
.TH FIGLET 6 "12 January 2011" "v2.2.3"

.SH NAME
FIGlet \- display large characters made up of ordinary screen characters

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B figlet
[
.B \-cklnoprstvxDELNRSWX
]
[
.B \-d
.I fontdirectory
]
.PD 0
.IP
.PD
[
.B \-f
.I fontfile
]
[
.B \-m
.I layoutmode
]
.PD 0
.IP
.PD
[
.B \-w
.IR outputwidth
]
[
.B \-C
.I controlfile
]
.PD 0
.IP
.PD
[
.B \-I
.I infocode
]
[
.I message
]

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B FIGlet
prints its input using large characters
(called ``FIGcharacters'')made up of ordinary
screen characters
(called ``sub-characters'').
.B 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.

.B 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.
.B FIGlet
fonts are stored in
separate files, which can be identified by the suffix
.RB `` .flf ''.
Most
.B FIGlet
font files will be stored in
.B FIGlet's
default font directory.

.B FIGlet
can also use ``control files'', which tell it to map certain input
characters to certain other characters, similar to the Unix
.B tr
command.  Control files can be identified by the suffix
.RB `` .flc ''.
Most
.B FIGlet
control files will be stored in
.B FIGlet's
default font directory.

You can store
.B FIGlet
fonts and control files
in compressed form.
See
.BR "COMPRESSED FONTS" .

.SH USAGE
Just start up
.B FIGlet
(type
.RB `` figlet '')
and then type whatever you want.
Alternatively, pipe a file or the output of another command through
.BR FIGlet ,
or put input on the command line
after the options.
See
.B EXAMPLES
for other things to do.

.SH OPTIONS
.B 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
.B FIGlet
is customized with a shell
.BR alias ,
all the options are usually still available.

Commonly-used options are
.BR \-f ,
.BR \-c ,
.BR \-k ,
.BR \-t ,
.B \-p
and
.BR \-v .

.TP
.BI \-f \ fontfile
Select the font.  The
.B .flf
suffix may be left off of
.IR fontfile ,
in which case
.B FIGlet
automatically appends it.
.B FIGlet
looks for the file first in the default font directory and then
in the current directory, or, if
.I fontfile
was given as a full pathname, in the given directory.
If the
.B \-f
option is not specified,
.B FIGlet
uses the font that was specified
when it was compiled.  To find out which font this is, use the
.B \-I3
option.

.TP
.BI \-d \ fontdirectory
Change the default font directory.
.B FIGlet
looks for fonts first in the
default directory and then in the current directory.
If the
.B \-d
option is not specified,
.B FIGlet
uses the directory that was specified
when it was compiled.  To find out which directory this is, use the
.B \-I2
option.

.TP
.B \-c
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-l
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-r
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-x
.PD
These options handle the justification of
.B FIGlet
output.
.B \-c
centers the output horizontally.
.B \-l
makes the output flush-left.
.B \-r
makes it flush-right.
.B \-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
.BR \-L ,
.B \-R
and
.BR \-X .)

.TP
.B \-t
.PD 0
.TP
.BI \-w \ outputwidth
.PD
These options control the
.IR outputwidth ,
or the screen width
.B FIGlet
assumes when formatting its output.
.B FIGlet
uses the
.I outputwidth
to determine when to break lines and how to center
the output.  Normally,
.B FIGlet
assumes 80 columns so that people with wide terminals
won't annoy the people they e-mail
.B FIGlet
output to.
.B \-t
sets the
.I outputwidth
to the terminal width.  If the terminal width cannot be determined,
the previous
.I outputwidth
is retained.
.B \-w
sets the
.I outputwidth
to the given integer.  An
.I outputwidth
of 1 is a special value that tells
.B FIGlet
to print each non-space FIGcharacter, in its entirety, on a separate line,
no matter how wide it is.

.TP
.B \-p
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-n
.PD
These options control how
.B FIGlet
handles newlines.
.B \-p
puts
.B FIGlet
into ``paragraph mode'', which eliminates some unnecessary line
breaks when piping a multi-line file through
.BR FIGlet .
In paragraph mode,
.B FIGlet
treats line breaks within a paragraph as if they were merely blanks
between words.  (Specifically,
.B \-p
causes
.B FIGlet
to convert any newline which is not preceded by a newline and not
followed by a space character into a blank.)
.B \-n
(default) puts
.B FIGlet
back to normal, in which every newline
.B FIGlet
reads causes it to produce a line break.

.TP
.B \-D
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-E
.PD
.B \-D
switches to the German (ISO 646-DE) character set.  Turns `[', `\e'
and `]' into umlauted A, O and U, respectively.  `{', `|' and `}' turn
into the respective lower case versions of these.  `~' turns into s-z.
.B \-E
turns off
.B \-D
processing.
These options are deprecated,
which means they probably will not appear
in the next version of
.BR FIGlet .

.TP
.BI \-C \ controlfile
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-N
.PD
These options deal with
.B FIGlet
.IR controlfiles .
A 
.I controlfile
is a file containing a list of commands that
.B FIGlet
executes each time it reads a character.  These commands can map certain
input characters to other characters, similar to the Unix
.B tr
command or the
.B FIGlet
.B \-D
option.
.B FIGlet
maintains a list of
.IR controlfiles ,
which is empty when
.B FIGlet
starts up.
.B \-C
adds the given
.I controlfile
to the list.
.B \-N
clears the
.I controlfile
list, cancelling the effect of any previous
.BR \-C .
.B FIGlet
executes the commands in all
.I controlfiles
in the list.  See
the file
.IR figfont.txt ,
provided with FIGlet,
for details on how to write a
.IR controlfile .

.TP
.B \-s
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-S
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-k
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-W
.PD
.TP
.B \-o
.PD
These options control how
.B FIGlet
spaces the FIGcharacters that it outputs.
.B \-s
(default) and
.B \-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
.IR layoutmode ,
which is defined by the font's author.
.B \-k
causes ``kerning''.  As many blanks as possible are
removed between FIGcharacters, so that they
touch, but the FIGcharacters are not smushed.
.B \-W
makes
.B FIGlet
display all FIGcharacters at their full width,
which may be fixed or variable, depending on the font.

The difference between
.B \-s
and
.B \-S
is that
.B \-s
will not smush a font whose author specified
kerning or full width as the default
.IR layoutmode ,
whereas
.B \-S
will attempt to do so.

If there is no information in the font
about how to smush,
or if the
.B \-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.)

.TP
.BI \-m \ layoutmode
Specifies an explicit
.I layoutmode
between
.B 1
and
.BR 63 .
.I Smushmodes
are explained in
.IR figfont.txt ,
which also provides complete information
on the format of a
.B FIGlet
font.
For the sake of backward compatibility
with versions of
.B FIGlet
before 2.2,
.B \-m0
is equivalent to
.BR \-k ,
.B \-m-1
is equivalent to
.BR \-W ,
and
.B \-m-2
is equivalent to
.BR \-s .
The
.B \-m
switch is normally
used only by font designers testing the various
.I layoutmodes
with a new font.

.TP
.B \-v
.PD 0
.TP
.BI \-I \ infocode
.PD
These options print various information about
.BR 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.

.B \-v
prints version and copyright information, as well as a ``Usage: ...''
line.
.B \-I
prints the information corresponding to the given
.I infocode
in a consistent, reliable (i.e., guaranteed to be the same in
future releases) format.
.B \-I
is primarily intended to be used by programs that use
.BR FIGlet .
.I infocode
can be any of the following.
.RS
.TP
.BR -1 " Normal operation (default)."
This
.I infocode
indicates that
.B FIGlet
should operate normally, not giving any informational printout,
printing its input in the selected font.
.TP
.BR 0 " Version and copyright."
This is identical to
.BR \-v .
.TP
.BR 1 " Version (integer)."
This will print the version of your copy of
.B 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,
.B FIGlet
2.2 will print
.RB `` 20200 ''
, version 2.2.1 will print
.RB `` 20201 ''.
Similarly, version 3.7.2 would print
.RB `` 30702 ''.
These numbers are guaranteed to be
ascending, with later versions having higher numbers.  Note that
the first major release of
.BR FIGlet ,
version 2.0, did not have the
.B \-I
option.
.TP
.BR 2 " Default font directory."
This will print the default font directory.  It is affected by the
.B \-d
option.
.TP
.BR 3 " Font."
This will print the name of the font
.B FIGlet
would use.  It is affected by
the
.B \-f
option.
This is not a filename; the
.RB `` .flf ''
suffix is not printed.
.TP
.BR 4 " Output width."
This will print the value
.B FIGlet
would use for
.IR outputwidth ,
the number of columns wide
.B FIGlet
assumes the screen is.
It is affected by the
.B \-w
and
.B \-t
options.
.RE
.IP
If
.I infocode
is any other positive value,
.B FIGlet
will simply exit without printing anything.

.TP
.B \-L
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-R
.PD 0
.TP
.B \-X
.PD
These options control whether
.B FIGlet
prints left-to-right or right-to-left.
.B \-L
selects left-to-right printing.
.B \-R
selects right-to-left printing.
.B \-X
(default) makes
.B 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.

.SH EXAMPLES
To use
.B FIGlet
with its default settings, simply type
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet

.ft R
.fi
.RE
and then type whatever you like.

To change the font, use the
.B \-f
option, for example,
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-f script

.ft R
.fi
.RE

Use the
.B \-c
option if you would prefer centered output:
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-c

.ft R
.fi
.RE

We have found that the most common use of
.B FIGlet
is making up large text to be placed in e-mail messages.  For this
reason,
.B FIGlet
defaults to 80 column output.  If you are using a wider terminal, and
would like
.B FIGlet
to use the full width of your terminal, use the
.B \-t
option:
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-t

.ft R
.fi
.RE

If you don't want
.B FIGlet
to smush FIGcharacters into each other, use the
.B \-k
option:
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-k

.ft R
.fi
.RE

If
.B figlet
gets its input from a file, it is often a good idea to use
.BR \-p :
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-p < myfile

.ft R
.fi
.RE

Of course, the above can be combined:
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet \-ptk \-f shadow < anotherfile
example% figlet \-cf slant

.ft R
.fi
.RE

Finally, if you want to have
.B FIGlet
take the input from the command
line instead of a file:
.RS
.nf
.ft B

example% figlet Hello world

.ft R
.fi
.RE

.SS Other Things to Try
On many systems nice effects can be obtained from the
.B lean
font by piping it through
.BR tr .
Some you might want to try are the following:

.RS
.nf
.ft B
example% figlet \-f lean | tr ' _/' ' ()'
example% figlet \-f lean | tr ' _/' './\e\e'
example% figlet \-f lean | tr ' _/' ' //'
example% figlet \-f lean | tr ' _/' '/  '
.ft R
.fi
.RE

Similar things can be done with the
.B block
font and many of the other
.B FIGlet
fonts.

.SH COMPRESSED FONTS
You can compress the fonts and controlfiles
using the
.B zip
archiving program.
Place only one font or controlfile in each archive,
and rename the archive file (which will have a name
ending in
.BR .zip )
back to
.B .flf
or
.B .flc
as the case may be.
If you don't rename the file appropriately,
.B FIGlet
won't be able to find it.

.B FIGlet
does not care what the filename within the
.B .zip
archive is, and will process only the first file.

The
.B .zip
format was chosen because tools to create and manipulate it
are widely available for free
on many platforms.

.SH THE STANDARD FONTS

Here are a few notes about some of the fonts provided with
.IR FIGlet .
You can get many other font from the Web site
.br
http://www.figlet.org/   This location 
should also contain the latest version of
.B FIGlet
and other related utilities.

The font
.I standard
is the basic
.B FIGlet
font, used when no other font is specified.
(This default can be changed when
.B FIGlet
is compiled on your system.)
The
.I controlfiles
.IR 8859-2 ,
.IR 8859-3 ,
.IR 8859-4 ,
and
.I 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
.B FIGlet's
default and requires no special
.IR controlfile .

Closely related are the fonts
.IR slant ,
.IR shadow ,
.IR small ,
.I smslant
(both small and slanted),
.IR smshadow ,
(both small and shadowed),
and
.IR big .
These fonts support only Latin-1, except that
.I big
supports Greek FIGcharacters as well;
the
.I controlfiles
.I frango
(for Greek text written in Latin characters, so-called
.RI `` frangovlakhika ''),
and
.I 8859-7
(for mixed Latin/Greek text)
are provided.

The
.I ivrit
font is a right-to-left font
including both Latin and Hebrew FIGcharacters;
the Latin characters are those of the
.I standard
font.
The available
.I controlfiles
are
.IR ilhebrew ,
which maps the letters you get
by typing on a U.S. keyboard
as if it were a Hebrew keyboard;
.IR ushebrew ,
which makes a reasonable mapping from
Latin letters to Hebrew ones;
and
.IR 8859-8 ,
which supports mixed Latin/Hebrew text.
.B Warning:
.B FIGlet
doesn't support bidirectional text,
so everything will come out right-to-left,
even Latin letters.

The fonts
.IR terminal ,
.IR digital ,
and
.I bubble
output the input character with some decoration around it
(or no decoration,
in the case of
.IR terminal ).
The characters coded 128 to 159,
which have varying interpretations, are output as-is.
You can use the appropriate
.I 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:
.IR script ,
which is larger than
.IR standard ,
and
.IR smscript ,
which is smaller.

The font 
.I lean
is made up solely of `/' and `_' sub-characters;
.I block
is a straight (non-leaning) version of it.

The font
.I mini
is very small, and especially suitable for e-mail signatures.

The font
.I banner
looks like the output of the
.B 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
.I katakana
syllabary;
the
.I controlfile
.I uskata
maps the upper-case and lower-case Latin letters
into the 48 basic
.I katakana
characters,
and the
.I controlfile
.I jis0201
handles JIS 0201X (JIS-Roman)
mixed Latin and
.I katakana
text.
Furthermore, the
.I banner
font also supports Cyrillic (Russian)
FIGcharacters; the
.I controlfile
.I 8859-5
supports mixed Latin and Cyrillic text,
the
.I controlfile
.I koi8r
supports the popular KOI8-R mapping of mixed text,
and the
.I controlfile
.I moscow
supports a
sensible mapping from Latin to Cyrillic,
compatible with the
.I moscow
font (not supplied).

The fonts
.I mnemonic
and
.I 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
.IR utf8 .

.SH FILES
.PD 0
.TP 20
.IB file .flf
.B FIGlet
font file
.TP 20
.IB file .flc
.B FIGlet
control file
.PD

.SH DIAGNOSTICS
.B FIGlet's
diagnostics are intended to be self-explanatory.  Possible
messages are

.RS
.nf
.ft B
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.
.ft R
.fi
.RE

This last message is printed when the
.B \-t
option is given, but the operating system in use does not include
the system call
.B FIGlet
uses to determine the terminal width.

.B FIGlet
also prints an explanatory message if the
.B \-F
option is given on the command line.
The earlier version of
.BR FIGlet ,
version 2.0, listed the available fonts when the
.B \-F
option was given.  This option has been removed from
.B FIGlet
2.1.  It has been replaced by the
.B figlist
script, which is part of the standard
.B FIGlet
package.

.SH ORIGIN
.RB `` 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
.B 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.

.SH BUGS
Very little error checking is done on font and control files.  While
.B FIGlet
tries to be forgiving of errors, and should (hopefully) never actually
crash, using an improperly-formatted file with
.B FIGlet
will produce unpredictable output.

.B 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
.B expand
before piping through
.BR FIGlet .

.B 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>
.SH WEBSITE AND MAILING LIST
You can get many fonts which are not in the basic
.B FIGlet
package from the Web site
http://www.figlet.org/   It 
should also contain the latest version of
.B FIGlet
and other utilities related to
.BR FIGlet .

There is a mailing list for 
.B FIGlet 
for general discussions about 
.B FIGlet 
and a place where you can ask questions or share ideas 
with other 
.B 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 
.B 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

.SH 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
.I 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
.B \-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
.BR \-o ,
.BR \-s ,
.BR \-k ,
.BR \-S ,
and
.B \-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.

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/)

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR figlist (6),
.BR chkfont (6),
.BR showfigfonts (6)