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FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) NAME figlet - print in large characters made up of ordinary screen characters SYNOPSIS figlet [ -clnprtvxDELNRX ] [ -d fontdirectory ] [ -f fontfile ] [ -m smushmode ] [ -w outputwidth ] [ -C controlfile ] [ -I infocode ] DESCRIPTION figlet prints its input using large characters made up of ordinary screen 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 characters 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. OTHER FONTS & MAILING LIST As of this writing you can get many fonts which are not in the basic figlet package by anonymous FTP from ftp.nicoh.com:pub/figlet/fonts. ftp.nicoh.com:pub/figlet should also contain the latest version of figlet and other utilities related to figlet. Of special interest are non- Roman fonts. As of this writing, there are Hebrew and Cyrillic (Russian) fonts; more are expected. We run an e-mail list dedicated to figlet software and font announcements, as well as general discussion about figlet. If you would like to be on this list, send e-mail to listserv@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu with the message body subscribe figlet-l YOUR NAME where YOUR NAME should be replaced with your name. For those who don't want to be bothered with the discussions, the list can be configured so that you only see software Page 1 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) update notices, or only software and font announcements. 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. 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. Every option has an inverse, so that, for example, if figlet is customized with a C-shell alias, all the options are still available. Commonly-used options are -f, -c, -m0, -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.) Page 2 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) -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 character, 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 puts figlet back to normal (default), in which every newline figlet reads causes it to produce a line break. -D -E -D switches to the German (Deutsch) 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. (Of course, all this assumes the font author has placed German characters in these positions in the font file. Many font authors do not.) -E switches back to English (default), i.e., the standard ASCII character set. -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 Page 3 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) controlfile list, cancelling the effect of any previous -C. figlet executes the commands in all controlfiles in the list. See CONTROLFILE FORMAT for details on how to write a controlfile. -m smushmode Specifies how figlet should ``smush'' and kern consecutive characters together. On the command line, -m0 can be useful, as it tells figlet to kern characters without smushing them together. Otherwise, this option is rarely needed, as a figlet font file specifies the best smushmode to use with the font. -m is, therefore, most useful to font designers testing the various smushmodes with their font. smushmode can be -2 through 63. -2 Get mode from font file (default). Every figlet font file specifies the best smushmode to use with the font. This will be one of the smushmodes (-1 through 63) described in the following paragraphs. -1 No smushing or kerning. Characters are simply concatenated together. 0 Kern only. Characters are pushed together until they touch. In any non-negative smushmode figlet kerns adjacent font characters, i.e., it pushes adjacent font characters together until their non-blank portions touch. At that point, it may or may not push the two font characters 1 screen character closer, depending on the smushmode. Pushing font characters one step closer requires ``smushing'' two non-blank screen characters into a single screen character. figlet has 6 ways of doing this, represented by 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32. The various non-negative smushmodes (0-63) are obtained by adding up the numbers corresponding to the sort of smushing figlet should do. In particular smushmode 0 kerns characters without smushing them into each other. 1 Smush equal characters. Two screen characters are smushed into a single character if they are the same. The resulting character is the same as both of the original characters. This mode does not smush the character known as a hardblank, which is a character that prints as a blank, but is not Page 4 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) smushed (except in mode 32). See FONT FILE FORMAT for more information on hardblanks. 2 Smush underscores. An underscore will be smushed into (and replaced by) any of ``|/\[]{}()<>''. 4 Hierarchy smushing. Smushes certain characters together according to a hierarchy containing 6 classes: ``|'', ``/\'', ``[]'', ``{}'', ``()'', ``<>''. A member of any class can be smushed into and replaced by a member of any later class. 8 Opposite pair smushing, type I. Smushes opposing brackets (``[]''), braces (``{}'') and parentheses (``()'') together, replacing them with a vertical bar (`|'). 16 Opposite pair smushing, type II. Smushes opposing slashes (``/\'') and greater- than/less-than (``><'') together, replacing them with an upper-case `X'. ``><'' are only smushed together when they are in that order, i.e., ``<>'' will not be smushed. 32 Hardblank smushing. Smushes two hardblanks together, replacing them with a single hardblank. See FONT FILE FORMAT for more information on hardblanks. -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. Page 5 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) 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 2.1 will print ``20100''. If there is ever a version 2.1.1, it will print ``20101''. 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. 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. EXAMPLES To use figlet with its default settings, simply type example% figlet Page 6 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) 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 font characters into each other, use the -m0 option: example% figlet -m0 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 -ptm0 -f shadow < anotherfile example% figlet -cf slant 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. Page 7 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) FONT FILE FORMAT If you would like to design a figlet font, it is usually best to begin with an already-existing font. Except for the first line of a font file, most of the file format should be obvious. If you design a font, please let us know about it! (See AUTHORS for e-mail addresses.) A figlet font filename must have the suffix ``.flf''. A figlet font file begins with a header. The header consists of one line giving information about the font, followed by zero or more comment lines, which figlet ignores. Following the header is the font data. The Header The first line of a figlet font file is of the following form: flf2ahardblank height up_ht maxlen smushmode cmt_count rtol where hardblank is a character, and the remaining values are integers, for example: flf2a$ 6 5 20 15 3 0 The last value, rtol, may be omitted, in which case it is assumed to be 0. flf2a$ 6 5 20 15 3 For those desiring a quick explanation, the above line indicates that this font has characters which are 6 lines tall, 5 of which are above the baseline, no line in the font data is more than 20 characters long, the default smushmode is 15 (kern and smush in various ways), there are 3 comment lines, and this font is to be printed left-to-right. More in-depth explanations follow. The first five characters of a font file should be ``flf2a''. ``flf2'' is the magic number of a figlet 2 font file. The next character (`a') is currently ignored. It may mean something in future versions of figlet. If it does, you can be sure your fonts will still work if this character is `a'. Immediately following this is the hardblank (character). Note that there are no blanks between ``flf2a'' and the hardblank. figlet can smush together consecutive characters in various ways. Normally, any character can be smushed into a blank. A hardblank prints as a blank, but cannot be Page 8 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) smushed into any character except a blank, and, if smushmode 32 is enabled, another hardblank. (For example, the `r' in script.flf contains a hardblank, `$' in that font. To see why this is necessary, create a copy of script.flf with this hardblank replaced by a blank. In this new font, the ``tr'' combination looks awful.) By convention, the hardblank is a `$', but it can be any character besides blank, newline and null. If you want the entire printing ASCII set available to use, make the hardblank a <delete> character. Then comes the height (integer). This is the number of screen lines high that each character in the font is. up_ht (integer) is the number of lines from the baseline of a character to the top of the character, i.e., it is the height of a character, ignoring any descenders. This number is currently ignored by figlet, but future versions may use it. maxlen (integer) is the maximum length of a line in the font file (excluding the first line and the comments lines, which can be as long as you want). You may want to make this a little too large as a safety measure. smushmode (integer) determines how much figlet smushes the font. Possible smushmodes are -1 through 63. Typically, you'll want to use 0 (kern font characters without smushing them together), -1 (no kerning or smushing) or 15 (smush various pairs of characters together into single characters). To try out different smushmodes with your font, use the -m command-line option. See OPTIONS for a more detailed explanation of these smushmodes. (Note that a smushmode of -2 can be given on the command line, but not in a font file.) Between the first line and the actual characters of the font are the comment lines. Cmt_count specifies how many lines there are. These lines are optional, may be as long as you want, and are ignored by figlet. rtol (integer) tells which direction the font is to be printed. 0 means left-to-right, and 1 means right-to-left. Left-to-right text is printed flush-left by default, while right-to-left text is printed flush-right by default. rtol may be omitted, in which case 0 (left-to-right) is assumed. Earlier versions of figlet (i.e., version 2.0) ignore rtol. Thus, a complete figlet font file header will look something like the following: Page 9 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) flf2a$ 6 5 20 15 3 Example by Glenn Chappell <ggc@uiuc.edu> 8/94 Permission is hereby given to modify this font, as long as the modifier's name is placed on a comment line. The Font Data The font data begins on the next line after the comments and continues to the end of the file. The characters from ` ' to `~' are given in standard ASCII order, followed by the extra German characters: umlauted `A', `O', `U', `a', `o' and `u' and s-z. Following these are the optional code- tagged characters. Each character uses height lines, where height was given on the first line of the font file. Each code-tagged character is preceeded by an extra line with the character's code (a number) on it. The characters in the file are given exactly as they should be printed out, with two exceptions: (1) hardblanks should be the hardblank character, not a blank, and (2) every line has an endmark character. In most figlet fonts, the endmark is either `@' or '#'. figlet eliminates the last block of consecutive equal characters from each line (other than the header lines) when the file is read in. By convention, the last line of a font character has 2 endmarks, while all the rest have one. This makes it easy to see where characters begin and end. No line should have more than 2 endmarks. The code-tagged characters are optional, and are ignored by earier versions of figlet (i.e., version 2.0). The code- tagged characters begin just after the German characters. There can be as many or as few of these as you like. The first line of a code-tagged character has a single number on it, the character's code, which is the number by which figlet will refer to it. This number can be in decimal, octal or hexadecimal, using the standard scanf conventions for such numbers. On the next line the character itself begins, in the same format as the un-tagged characters. If two or more font characters have the same tag, the last one in the font is the one used. For this purpose, the normal ASCII characters are considered to have tags equal to their ASCII value, while the German characters are given tags -255 through -249. There is no required encoding for the code-tagged characters. figlet simply prints the character with the given code when it is told to. However, in most of the fonts, we have used ISO Latin-1 for characters 160-255, following a suggestion of Zhahai Stewart. Stewart has suggested using Unicode for other characters. Page 10 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) The zero tag is treated specially. It is figlet's ``missing character''. Whenever figlet is told to print a character which doesn't exist in the current font, it will print character zero. If character zero doesn't exist, nothing will be printed. Notes It is very important that every character in a font has the same height, and, once the endmarks are removed, that all the lines constituting a single font character have the same length. Be careful also that no lines in the font file have trailing blanks, as figlet will take these to be the endmarks. Many problems like these can be found easily using chkfont, part of the standard figlet package, and also available, as of this writing, by anonymous FTP from ftp.nicoh.com:pub/figlet/util. If you don't want to define all the characters, make the undefined characters empty, i.e., each line of the character should consist only of one or two endmarks. The blank character should usually be made entirely of hardblanks. (Most slanted fonts are an exception to this.) If you design a font, it is helpful if you put your name and an e-mail address on a comment line. If you will allow others to modify your font, you may want to say so on a comment line. If a font contains a non-Roman alphabet stored in locations normally taken by ASCII, we have found it helpful to include a ``translation'' table as one of the characters of the font. Typically, the ``~'' character contains a list of all the special characters in the font, along with the ASCII characters they correspond to. It is a good idea to keep this table no more than 79 columns wide. (Thanks to Gedaliah Friedenberg for this idea.) Again, if you design a font, please let us know! CONTROLFILE FORMAT (Note: This section isn't terribly well-written. I really don't have time right now to do much with it. If you want to write a controlfile, just look at the existing files and ignore the f command, and you'll probably do pretty well. Anyone needing extra help can write us at <figlet@uiuc.edu>. Also, anyone willing to revise this section or the FONT FILE FORMAT section is welcome to do so. Please let us know about your efforts if you give it a try. -GGC-) Page 11 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) Controlfiles are files containing lists of commands that figlet executes each time it reads a character. A controlfile is specified to figlet using the -C command line option (see OPTIONS). In the file itself the first line identifies the file as a figlet controlfile, and the remaining lines are the commands, one per line. Currently, the only recognized commands tell figlet to translate one character to another (similar to the Unix tr command). In future versions of figlet, more commands may be added. As with font files, when writing a controlfile, it is usually best to begin with an existing file. The filename of a figlet controlfile must have the suffix ``.flc''. The first five characters of a controlfile should be ``flc2a''. ``flc2'' is the magic number of a figlet controlfile. The next character (`a') is currently ignored. It may mean something in future versions of figlet. If it does, you can be sure your files will still work if this character is `a'. Each of the following lines of the file consists of a one- character command followed by whatever parameters the command requires, excepting blank lines, which are ignored. There are currently three recognized commands: #, t and f. # comment Any line beginning with # is ignored. t translate This is similar to the Unix tr command. It directs figlet to ``translate'' one character to another. ``t'' is followed by one or more blanks, then by a character (or range of characters, e.g., ``A-Z'') then one or more blanks, then another character (or range). For example, t # $ will convert `#' to `$', while t A-Z a-z will convert upper-case ASCII to lower-case ASCII. A range should always be followed by another range of the same size. A number of backslash (`\') options are available for Page 12 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) specifying characters. Any of the standard ``C'' language backslash-character conventions are legal, e.g., ``\n'' for newline, etc. Also, backslash-blank can be used to specify a blank character. Backslash followed by a number in any of the standard scanf formats (decimal, octal or hexadecimal) specifies the character with the given code. For example, t \n-\ \65-W will convert all characters from newline to blank into the corresponding characters from `A' to `W' (`A' has code 65). If a number of consecutive t commands are given, then for each character input, only the first applicable command, if any, will be executed. As a result, t A B t B A will swap the characters `A' and `B'. If figlet reads an `A' the first command will change `A' to `B', in which case the second will not be executed. In the following list, t A B t A C the second command is never executed. In short, a sequence of t commands ``does what it ought to''. f freeze More complex files, in which a single character is acted upon by several t commands, can be set up using the f command. f ``freezes'' the current character, executing the remaining commands in the controlfile as if they were in a separate file. The f command has no parameters, and anything following it on the same line is ignored. (Note: If you, along with so many others, cannot figure out what the f command does, or why anyone would use it, feel free to ignore it.) After figlet executes a t command, it skips to the end of the file or to the next f command. If any t commands follow, the first applicable one will be executed. The result is that f acts as a ``freeze'', executing the remaining commands as if they were in a separate file. FILES Page 13 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) 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 formatting 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 Page 14 (printed 12/29/95) FIGLET(6) v2.1 (28 Apr 1995) FIGLET(6) through figlet. figlet output is quite ugly if it is displayed in a proportionally-spaced font. I suppose this is to be expected. AUTHORS Glenn Chappell <ggc@uiuc.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 <chai@uiuc.edu>, 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. Page 15 (printed 12/29/95)