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FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
NAME
figlet - print in large characters made up of ordinary
screen characters
SYNOPSIS
figlet [ -clnptvDEF ] [ -m smushmode ] [ -w outputwidth ]
[ -d fontdirectory ] [ -f fontfile ]
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, and is
oriented normally, not sideways as in many banner pro-
grams.
figlet can print in a variety of fonts, with adjacent
characters ``smushed'' together in various ways. figlet
fonts are stored in separate files, which can be identi-
fied by the suffix ``.flf''. figlet Most figlet font
files will be stored in figlet's default font directory.
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 (except -v and -F) has an inverse,
so that, for example, if figlet is customized with a C-
shell alias, all the options are still available.
-c
-l -c centers the output horizontally. -l puts it
back to left-justified (default).
-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 -F option.
-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
v2.0 9 August 1993 1
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
default font directory and then in the current
directory, or, if fontfile was given as a full
pathname, in the given directory.
-w outputwidth
Sets the outputwidth to the given integer. 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. -w and -t override each other.
-m smushmode
Specifies how figlet should ``smush'' consecutive
characters together. This option is rarely needed,
as a figlet font file specifies the best smushmode
to use with the font. smushmode can be one of:
-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 following smushmodes (-1
through 63).
-1 No smushing.
Characters are simply concatenated together.
In any non-negative smushmode figlet 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.
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 smushed (except in mode 32). See
FONT FILE FORMAT for more information on
hardblanks.
v2.0 9 August 1993 2
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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 less-
than/greater-than (``<>'') together, replac-
ing them with an upper-case `X'.
32 Hardblank smushing.
Smushes two hardblanks together, replacing
them with a single hardblank. See FONT FILE
FORMAT for more information on hardblanks.
-p
-n -p puts figlet into paragraph mode, which elimi-
nates some spurious 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.
-t Sets the outputwidth to the terminal width. If the
terminal width is not known, the previous out-
putwidth is retained. 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. -w and -t
override each other.
-v Prints out the version and copyright information,
then exits.
-D
-E -D switches to the German (Deutsch) character set.
Turns `[', `\' and `]' into umlauted A, O and U,
v2.0 9 August 1993 3
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
respectively. `{', `|' and `}' turn into the
respective lower case versions of these. `~' turns
into s-z. -E switches back to English (default).
No other character sets are currently supported.
-F Displays the name of the default font and the
default font directory, along with the names of the
figlet fonts in the default directory, then exits.
(This will reflect any change of the default direc-
tory with the -d option, as long as -d is given
before the -F).
EXAMPLES
To use figlet with its default settings, simply type
example% figlet
and then type whatever you like.
Use the -c option if you would prefer centered output:
example% figlet -c
To change the font, use the -f option, for example,
example% figlet -f script
To see what fonts are available in the default font direc-
tory, use -F:
example% figlet -F
We have found the most common usage of figlet to be 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 figlet gets its input from a file, it is often a good
idea to use -p:
example% figlet -p < myfile
Of course, most of the above can be combined:
example% figlet -ptf shadow < anotherfile
v2.0 9 August 1993 4
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
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.
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
for example:
flf2a$ 6 5 20 15 1
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/when 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
v2.0 9 August 1993 5
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
cannot be smushed into any character except a blank, and,
if smushmode 32 is enabled, another hardblank. (For exam-
ple, 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 are free to
make this a little (or alot) too large as a safety mea-
sure. As an added safety measure, figlet adds a fudge
factor to maxlen.
smushmode (integer) determines how much figlet smushes the
font. Possible smushmodes are -1 through 63. Typically,
you'll want to use -1 (no smushing), 0 (push font charac-
ters together until they touch) or 15 (smush various pairs
of characters together into single characters). To try
out different smushmodes with your font, use the -m com-
mand-line option. See OPTIONS for a more detailed expla-
nation 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.
Thus, a complete figlet font file header will look some-
thing like the following:
flf2a$ 6 5 20 15 1
Example by Glenn Chappell 7/93
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
v2.0 9 August 1993 6
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
the extra German characters: umlauted `A', `O', `U', `a',
`o' and `u' and s-z. Each character uses height lines,
where height was given on the first line of the font file.
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.
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.
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 an endmark.
The blank character should usually be made entirely of
hardblanks. (Some slanted fonts are an exception.)
Again, if you design a font, please let us know!
FILES
file.flf figlet font 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 directory
"-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.
v2.0 9 August 1993 7
FIGLET(6) FIGLET(6)
ORIGIN
``figlet'' stands for ``Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters''.
Inspired by Frank's
Most of the figlet fonts were inspired by signatures on
various UseNet articles. Since typically hundreds of peo-
ple use the same style of letters in their signatures, it
was not deemed necessary to give credit to any one font
designer.
BUGS
Very little error checking is done on font files. While
figlet tries to be forgiving of errors, and should (hope-
fully) never actually crash, using an improperly-formatted
font 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 pro-
portionally-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 email Glenn will probably get answers, but if you
email his best friend:
Ian Chai <spectre@uiuc.edu> (or figlet@uiuc.edu), who is
an e-mail fanatic, you'll get answers, endless conversa-
tion 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
email him... he's decidedly an un-email-fanatic.
v2.0 9 August 1993 8
