figlet(6)
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''. 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 what
ever 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 spec
ified 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 flushright. -x (default) sets the justification accord
ing to whether left-to-right or right-to-left text
is selected. Left-to-right text will be flushleft, while right-to-left text will be flush-right.
(Left-to-right versus right-to-left text is con
trolled 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 email 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 FIGchar
acter, in its entirety, on a separate line, no mat
ter how wide it is. - -p
-n These options control how FIGlet handles newlines. - -p puts FIGlet into ``paragraph mode'', which elim
inates 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. (Specifi
cally, -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 charac
ter. These commands can map certain input charac
ters 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 dis
played as close together as possible, and overlap
ping 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 FIGcharac
ters, so that they touch, but the FIGcharacters are
not smushed. -W makes FIGlet display all FIGchar acters 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 compatibil
ity 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 nor mally used only by font designers testing the vari
ous 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 exe
cuted, 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 informa
tional 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 ver
sion number is multiplied by 10000, the subversion 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 guaran
teed 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.
- 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-toright 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 remain
ing 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
- example% figlet
- 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:
example% figlet -c- 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:
example% figlet -t- If you don't want FIGlet to smush FIGcharacters into each other, use the -k option:
example% figlet -k- 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 plat
forms.
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 inter
preting 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 char
acters, 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 let
ters.
The fonts terminal, digital, and bubble output the input
character with some decoration around it (or no decora
tion, in the case of terminal). The characters coded 128
to 159, which have varying interpretations, are output asis. You can use the appropriate controlfiles to process
Latin-2, Latin-3, or Latin-4 (but not Latin-5) text, pro
vided 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-charac
ters; 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 pro
gram; 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 sen
sible mapping from Latin to Cyrillic, compatible with the
moscow font (not supplied).
The fonts mnemonic and safemnem support the mnemonic char
acter 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.
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 sys
tem 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 signa
tures on various UseNet articles. Since typically hun
dreds 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 improp
erly-formatted file with FIGlet will produce unpredictable
output.
FIGlet does not handle format characters in a very intel
ligent way. A tab character is converted to a blank, and
vertical-tab, form-feed and carriage-return are each con
verted 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 pro
portionally-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>
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. We run 3 e-mail lists dedi
cated to FIGlet software and font announcements, as well as general discussion about FIGlet: - figlet@figlet.org General discussion
figletfonts@figlet.org Font announcements
figletsoftware@figlet.org Software announcements
(The last two lists are moderated) - To subscribe or unsubscribe from the FIGlet mailing lists,
please visit the corresponding URL: - http://www.figlet.org/mailman/listinfo/figlet
http://www.figlet.org/mailman/listinfo/figletfonts
http://www.figlet.org/mailman/listinfo/figletsoftware
AUTHORS
Glenn Chappell <c486scm@semovm.semo.edu> 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 <ianchai@usa.net>, who is an e-mail fanatic,
you'll get answers, endless conversation about the myster
ies 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 <ghealton@nmia.com>
added the -A option for version 2.1.1. This option speci
fied input from the command line; it is still allowed, but
has no effect.
John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> 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 <solution@earth
link.net>.
- Christiaan Keet <keet@plig.net> 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/)