Compendium Deluxe 1/LSD Compendium Deluxe 1.iso/a/text/manipulation/figlet.lha/README

Text File | 1993-11-04 | 7.5 KB | 205 lines

  ___            _               _____ _       _      _   _
 / _ \ _ __ ___ (_) __ _  __ _  |  ___(_) __ _| | ___| |_| |
| |_| | '_ ` _ \| |/ _` |/ _` | | |_  | |/ _` | |/ _ \ __| |
|  _  | | | | | | | (_| | (_| | |  _| | | (_| | |  __/ |_|_|
|_| |_|_| |_| |_|_|\__, |\__,_| |_|   |_|\__, |_|\___|\__(_)
                   |___/                 |___/


This is an Amiga port of Figlet, an excellent ASCII font rendering
program described below.

This Amiga version is a little different from the original program.
The argument parsing is changed to the AmigaDOS 2.0 "ReadArgs" style
so that you can type "figlet ?" and you will see the following
template:

   FONTNAME,DEUTSCH/S,CENTER/S,PARAGRAPH/S,COLUMNS/N,SMUSHMODE/N:

You can specify the fontname (without using the keyword) and can
specify any of the other keywords by putting the keyword on the
command line.  For example:

    FIGLET CENTER              Use the default font and
                    center the text.

    FIGLET smslant COLUMNS 40    Use the smslant font and
                    set the column width to 40.

(the keywords don't need to be upper case).

Once you start the program, it will accept any input you type and
print it's output back in the console.  A handy use for this program
is to run it in a console window and try the various options
until you get the text you want, and then cut it from the console
window and paste it into whatever program you want it in.

As Figlet itself changes, I will try and keep this port current.  The
most current Amiga version will be found on Portal.  This Amiga port
is by Steve Tibbett, and I take all credit for any bugs in this
version - if you find a problem, please send the bug report to me,
not to the original authors.  If it really is a problem with Figlet
and not my port of it, then I will forward it to them.


    Name:        Steve Tibbett
    Portal:        SteveX
    Internet:    [e-mail]
    Compuserve:    72627,1325
    Bix:        s.tibbett
    BBS:        613-731-3419
    Voice:        613-731-5316


---------------------------> Original Docs Below <------------------------------


About figlet (Frank, Ian & Glenn's Letters) release 2.0, August 9, 1993
----------------------------------------------------------------------

figlet is a program that creates large characters out of ordinary
screen characters.  figlet can create characters in many different
styles and can "smush" these characters together in various ways.
figlet output is generally reminiscent of the sort of "signatures" many
people like to put at the end of e-mail and UseNet messages.  Some
example figlet output is given below.

If you like figlet (hey, even if you _hate_ figlet), please send an
e-mail message to [e-mail] or [e-mail].

[Note: Apple IIGS GNO users having no "C" compiler can contact Jawaid
Bazyar at <[e-mail]> for a pre-compiled GNO version of figlet.]


Files
-----

README    -- This file.
figlet.c  -- The figlet source code.
Makefile  -- The figlet makefile.  Used by the make command.
figlet.6  -- The figlet man(ual) page.
<xxx>.flf -- All files ending in ".flf" are figlet font files.


Installing figlet
-----------------

First decide in which directories figlet, and the figlet font files
(the ".flf" files) will be stored (usually "/usr/games" and
"/usr/games/lib/figlet.dir") and which will be the default font (we
recommend "standard.flf").

Edit "Makefile", and set the variables DEFAULTFONTDIR, DEFAULTFONTFILE
and OLD_DIR_STRUCTS to the appropriate values.  Set DEFAULTFONTDIR to
be the full pathname of the directory in which you will keep the figlet
font files.  Set DEFAULTFONTFILE to be the filename of the default
font.  OLD_DIR_STRUCTS should normally be 0.

Then, in the directory with the figlet source in it, type "make
install".

If the program fails to compile, set OLD_DIR_STRUCTS to 1 in Makefile,
and type "make install" again.  (Setting OLD_DIR_STRUCTS to 1 makes
figlet use an older method of reading directories.  On newer systems,
this method will often compile without errors, but will not run
properly, so OLD_DIR_STRUCTS should only be set to 1 if figlet will not
compile otherwise.)

If you cannot, or do not want to install the man pages, you can still
probably read it using
    nroff -man figlet.6 | more
and you should not use "make install" but just "make" and then copy the
files manually.

If space is a problem, the only files you absolutely must have to run
figlet are "figlet" (the executable) and at least one font (preferably
the one you chose to be the default font).

We have successfully compliled figlet on the following systems:

Hardware              Operating System

Sun SPARC             SunOS V4.1.3
SGI Iris 4D/25GT      IRIX V4.0.5
SGI Iris 4D/340VGX    IRIX V4.0.5
SGI Iris Skywriter    IRIX V4.0.5
Cray 2                UNICOS V6.1
Cray Y-MP             UNICOS V6.1
Sequent S81           DYNIX V3.1.1
Convex C240           ConvexOS V10.1
IBM RS/6000           AIX V3
HP 9000/375           HP-UX V7.0
NeXT Mach             NeXTstep V3.0


Using figlet
------------

At the shell prompt, type "figlet".  Then type, say, "Hello, world!"
and press return.  "Hello, world!" in nice, big, designer characters
should appear on your screen.  If you chose standard.flf to be the
default font, you should see
 _   _      _ _                             _     _ _
| | | | ___| | | ___    __      _____  _ __| | __| | |
| |_| |/ _ \ | |/ _ \   \ \ /\ / / _ \| '__| |/ _` | |
|  _  |  __/ | | (_) |   \ V  V / (_) | |  | | (_| |_|
|_| |_|\___|_|_|\___( )   \_/\_/ \___/|_|  |_|\__,_(_)
                    |/
(By the way, the above is meant to be diplayed in a monospaced font.)
Then type something else, or type an EOF (typically control-D) to quit
figlet.

Now you can send the output of figlet to a file (e.g., "figlet > file")
and e-mail it to your friends (who will probably say, "Wow!  It must
have taken you hours to put that together!")

To use other fonts, use the "-f" command line option.  For example, if
you had said "figlet -f smslant" above, you would have seen
   __  __    ____                         __   ____
  / /_/ /__ / / /__      _    _____  ____/ /__/ / /
 / __  / -_) / / _ \_   | |/|/ / _ \/ __/ / _  /_/
/_/ /_/\__/_/_/\___( )  |__,__/\___/_/ /_/\_,_(_)
                   |/

Here are some other useful command line options:

-c  center -- centers the output of figlet.
-t  terminal -- figlet asks your terminal how wide it is, and uses
    this to determine when to break lines.  Normally, figlet assumes
    80 columns so that people with wide terminals won't annoy the
    people they e-mail figlet output to.
-D  Deutsch -- switches to the German character set.  Turns `[', `\'
    and `]' to umlauted A, O and U, respectively.  `{', `|' and `}'
    turn into the respective lower case versions of these.  `~' turns
    into s-z.
-p  paragraph mode -- eliminates some spurious line breaks when piping
    a multi-line file through figlet.
-F  Fonts -- lists the available figlet fonts.
-v  version -- prints information about your copy of figlet.

For in-depth explanations of these and other otions, see the man page.


Other Stuff
-----------

Although you don't have to design your own fonts to use figlet, we'd
certainly like it if lots of people did make up new figlet fonts.  If
you feel like giving it a try, see the "FONT FILE FORMAT" section of
the man page.

See "Other Things to Try" in the EXAMPLES section of the man page
for...  well... other things to try.


Authors
-------

figlet was written mostly by Glenn Chappell <[e-mail]>.  The
author not being an e-mail fanatic, most correspondence (bug reports,
rave reviews, etc.) should be directed to his secretary (who is
definitely an e-mail fanatic), Ian Chai <[e-mail]> (or
[e-mail]).