machine.trench.com[~]> man figlet
FIGLET(6) 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
update notices, or only software and font announcements.
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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. 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 exam-
ple, 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 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 flush-
right. -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 flush-
left, 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
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
-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 charac-
ter, 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 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 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 posi-
tions 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 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
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
commands in all controlfiles in the list. See CON-
TROLFILE FORMAT for details on how to write a con-
trolfile.
-m smushmode
Specifies how figlet should ``smush'' and kern con-
secutive characters together. On the command line,
-m0 can be useful, as it tells figlet to kern char-
acters 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 ``smush-
ing'' 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,
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
but is not 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 accord-
ing 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 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
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 ver-
sion 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, ver-
sion 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 speci-
fied in the font file.
EXAMPLES
To use figlet with its default settings, simply type
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 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.
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FIGLET(6) 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 con-
sists of one line giving information about the font, fol-
lowed 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 charac-
ters in various ways. Normally, any character can be
smushed into a blank. A hardblank prints as a blank, but
cannot be smushed into any character except a blank, and,
if smushmode 32 is enabled, another hardblank. (For
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 smush-
ing 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 some-
thing like the following:
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
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 charac-
ters 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 charac-
ters. 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 charac-
ters. 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.
The zero tag is treated specially. It is figlet's ``miss-
ing character''. Whenever figlet is told to print a char-
acter which doesn't exist in the current font, it will
v2.1 28 Apr 1995 10
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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
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 charac-
ter 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 loca-
tions 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
. 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-)
Controlfiles are files containing lists of commands that
figlet executes each time it reads a character. A
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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. Cur-
rently, the only recognized commands tell figlet to trans-
late one character to another (similar to the Unix tr com-
mand). 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 con-
trolfile. 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 com-
mand 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 specifying characters. Any of the standard
``C'' language backslash-character conventions are
legal, e.g., ``\n'' for newline, etc. Also,
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 fol-
lowing 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
file.flf figlet font file
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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 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 han-
dled better by piping files through expand before piping
through figlet.
figlet output is quite ugly if it is displayed in a
v2.1 28 Apr 1995 14
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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.
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