xscreensaver(1)

NAME

starwars - draws a perspective text crawl, like at the
beginning of the movie

SYNOPSIS

starwars [-display host:display.screen] [-window]  [-root]
[-visual  visual]  [-delay  microseconds] [-fps] [-program
command] [-size integer  ]  [-columns  integer]  [-wrap
-no-wrap]  [-left  |  -center  |  -right] [-lines integer]
[-spin float] [-steps integer] [-delay usecs] [-no-smooth]
[-no-thick]

DESCRIPTION

The starwars program runs another program to generate a stream of text, then animates that text receeding into the
background at an angle, in front of a star field.

OPTIONS

starwars accepts the following options:

-window Draw on a newly-created window. This is the

default.

-root Draw on the root window.

-install

Install a private colormap for the window.

-visual visual

Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the
name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal
or hex) of a specific visual.

-program sh-command

The command to run to generate the text to dis
play. This option may be any string acceptable to
/bin/sh. The program will be run at the end of a
pipe, and any characters that it prints to stdout will be printed on the starwars window. If the
program exits, it will be launched again after we
have processed all the text it produced.

Note that starwars is not a terminal emulator:
programs that try to directly address the screen
will not do what you might expect. This program
merely draws the characters on the screen left to
right, top to bottom, in perspective. Lines (may)
wrap when they reach the right edge.

In other words, programs like fortune(1) will work, but programs like top(1) won't.

Some examples:

starwars -columns 30 -program

'wget -qO- http://webcrawler.com/cgi-bin/SearchTicker'
starwars -columns 76 -program 'cat

/usr/src/linux/README'
starwars -program 'ping www.starwars.com'
starwars -no-wrap -left -program 'finger

@gnu.org'
starwars -no-wrap -left -program 'ps -ef'

-size integer

How large a font to use, in points. (Well, in
some arbitrary unit we're calling "points" for the
sake of argument.) The -columns option overrides this.

-columns integer

How many columns of text should be visible on the
bottom line of the screen. The default is 80.
This option overrides the -size option: if you
specify a number of columns, the font will be
scaled as needed to fit.

-wrap Word-wrap lines when they reach the rightmost col

umn. This is the default.

-no-wrap

Do not word-wrap: just let the lines go off the
right side of the screen.

-left | -center | -right

Whether to align the text flush left, centered, or
flush right. The default is centered.

-lines integer

How many lines should be allowed to be on the
screen before they fall off the end. The default
is 125.

-spin float

The star field on the background slowly rotates.
This is how fast. The default is 0.03.

-steps integer

How many steps should be used to scroll a single
line. The default is 35. If the animation looks
jerky to you, increase this number.

-delay usecs

The delay between steps of the animation; default
is 40000 (1/25th second.)

-fps Display a running tally of how many frames per

second are being rendered. In conjunction with
-delay 0, this can be a useful benchmark of your GL performance.

-no-smooth

Turn off anti-aliasing of the lines used to draw
the font. This will make the text blockier, but
may improve performance.

-no-thick

Turn off use of thick lines for the characters
that are close to the foreground. This will make
the text appear unnaturally skinny, but may
improve performance.

ENVIRONMENT

DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.

XENVIRONMENT

to get the name of a resource file that overrides
the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MAN
AGER property.

SEE ALSO

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 1998-2001 by Jamie Zawinski and Claudio Mat
suoka. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and
sell this software and its documentation for any purpose
is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above
copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in sup
porting documentation. No representations are made about
the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is
provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

AUTHOR

Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org> and Claudio Matauoka <clau
dio@helllabs.org>

X Version 11 25-Jul-98 XScreenSaver(1)