About FIGlet (Frank, Ian & Glenn's Letters) release 2.2.5, 31 May 2012

FIGlet is a program that creates large characters out of ordinary screen characters _ _ _ _ _ _

(This is meant to be viewed in a monospaced font.) FIGlet can create characters in many different styles and can kern and "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.

If you like FIGlet (hey, even if you *hate* FIGlet), please send an e-mail message to <info@figlet.org>

The official FIGlet web page: http://www.figlet.org/

Files -- Unix version

README -- This file. figlet.c -- The FIGlet source code. zipio.h, -- A package for reading ZIP archives zipio.c, inflate.c, crc.c utf8.h, -- A package to convert strings between UTF-8 and UCS-4. utf8.c getopt.c -- Source for the standard "getopt" routine, in case you

don't have it in your C library.  Not used by default.

Makefile -- The FIGlet makefile. Used by the make command. figlet.6 -- The FIGlet man(ual) page. figlist -- Script that lists available fonts and control files. showfigfonts -- Script that gives a sample of each available font. chkfont.c -- Source code for chkfont: a program that checks FIGlet

fonts for formatting errors.  You can ignore this file
unless you intend to design or edit fonts.

figfont.txt -- Text file that explains the format of FIGlet fonts.

You can ignore this file unless you intend to design
or edit fonts.

fonts -- Directory containing fonts and control files. <xxx>.flf -- All files ending in ".flf" are FIGlet font files. <xxx>.flc -- All files ending in ".flc" are FIGlet control files.

Files -- DOS version

README -- This file figlet.exe -- The FIGlet program. figlet.man -- The FIGlet man(ual) page. showall.bat -- Batch file that lists available fonts and samples of each. chkfont.exe -- A program that checks FIGlet fonts for formatting errors.

You can ignore this file unless you intend to design
or edit fonts.

figfont.txt -- Text file that explains the format of FIGlet fonts.

You can ignore this file unless you intend to design
or edit fonts.

fonts -- Directory containing fonts and control files. <xxx>.flf -- All files ending in ".flf" are FIGlet font files. <xxx>.flc -- All files ending in ".flc" are FIGlet control files.

Installing FIGlet --- Unix version

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

Edit "Makefile", and set the variables DEFAULTFONTDIR and DEFAULTFONTFILE 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.

At this point, you have two choices:

(1) Just compile FIGlet. To go this, go into the directory containing the FIGlet source, and type "make figlet". Then copy the various files to the proper locations. The executable (figlet), along with figlist and showfigfonts, goes wherever you keep your executables. The fonts (<xxx>.flf) and control files (<xxx>.flc) go in the default font directory. The man page (figlet.6) goes in section 6 (usually /usr/man/man6). If you cannot, or do not want to, install the man page, you can probably still read it using

nroff -man figlet.6 | more

(2) Do a complete installation. To do the this, set the variables BINDIR and MANDIR in Makefile to the appropriate values. BINDIR should be the full pathname of the directory in which the executable files should be put (we recommend "/usr/games"); MANDIR should be the full pathname of the directory in which the figlet man page should be put, generally "/usr/man/man6". Once DEFAULTFONTDIR, DEFAULTFONTFILE, BINDIR and MANDIR have been set, in the directory containing the FIGlet source, type "make install".

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).

Installing FIGlet -- DOS version

Unpack the ZIPfile using PKUNZIP, Info-Zip UNZIP, WinUnzip, or any other ZIP-compatible program. Be sure to use the -d option with PKUNZIP in order to preserve the directory structure. We recommend that you unpack the archive into C:\FIGLET, but any directory will do.

If you unpack the archive on top of an older version of FIGlet, be sure to delete the file FIGLET.COM. The executable program in this release is named FIGLET.EXE. You can keep your old fonts by putting them in a FONTS subdirectory before unpacking. (There are upgraded versions of the standard fonts in the archive.)

Using FIGlet

(Note: FIGlet needs a good thorough tutorial. Currently I don't have the time to write one, but if anyone wants to do so, go right ahead. I'd be glad to help out a little. Write us at <ianchai@usa.net> if you're interested. -GGC-)

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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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. -k tells FIGlet to kern characters without smushing them together. -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.

-p paragraph mode -- eliminates some spurious line breaks when piping

a multi-line file through FIGlet.

-v version -- prints information about your copy of FIGlet.

For in-depth explanations of these and other options, see the man page. DOS users, see figlet.man.

Other Fonts & Mailing List

A good number of FIGlet fonts have been developed, most of which are not included in the standard FIGlet package. Many of these can be obtained from http://www.figlet.org/ Some non-Roman fonts are available at this site. As of this writing, we have Hebrew, Cyrillic (Russian) and Greek.

There are 3 mailing lists available for FIGlet:

	 figlet@figlet.org           General discussion of FIGlet
	 figletfonts@figlet.org      Announcements about fonts 
	 figletsoftware@figlet.org   Announcements about software 
	 (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

Also, for those who maintain archives of figlet fonts, please note that all of the standard fonts have been changed, as of release 2.1, to include non-ASCII characters. These fonts are the following:

big.flf (also contains Greek) banner.flf (also contains Cyrillic and Japanese katakana) block.flf bubble.flf digital.flf ivrit.flf (right-to-left, also contains Hebrew) lean.flf mini.flf script.flf shadow.flf slant.flf small.flf smscript.flf smshadow.flf smslant.dld standard.flf term.flf

The new versions of these fonts can be identified by the words "figlet release 2.1" somewhere in the first few lines.

Other Stuff

FIGlet is available for operating systems other than Unix. Please see ftp://ftp.figlet.org/program/

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. If you do design a font, please let us know by mailing us at <info@figlet.org>

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 <c486scm@semovm.semo.edu>. The author not being an e-mail fanatic, most correspondence (bug reports, rave reviews, etc.) used to be handled to his secretary (who is definitely an e-mail fanatic), Ian Chai <ianchai@usa.net> and has since moved on to another FIGlet enthusiast, Christiaan Keet <info@figlet.org>. Current maintenance is conducted by Claudio Matsuoka <cmatsuoka@gmail.com>.