NAME

       sm - Displays a short text fullscreen

SYNOPSIS

       sm [ OPTIONS ] [ text | - ]

DESCRIPTION

       Screen Message  will  display  a given multi-line message as large as possible, fullscreen
       and black on white. You can specify the text either when launching sm, or  edit  it  while
       the program is running.

       After  a short timeout, the text entry and the quit button will disappear, leaving nothing
       on the screen but the entered text. To  continue  entering  text,  just  start  typing  or
       (left-)click anywhere on the screen.

       To clear the displayed text, press Escape.

       To invert the colors of the text and the background, press Ctrl-I.

       To quit the program, press Ctrl-Q, or Escape twice, or click the "Quit"-button.

OPTIONS

       [ text | - ]
              Text  to  display  at  start up. Defaults to ":-)". If "-" is passed to sm, it will
              read the text to display from the standard input, see REMOTE CONTROLLING SM.

       -f, --foreground=colordesc
              Define a different color to use for the foreground of  the  text  to  display  than
              black.  The  text  string can be in any of the forms accepted by XParseColor; these
              include  name  for  a  color  from  rgb.txt,  such  as  DarkSlateGray,  or  a   hex
              specification such as #3050b2 or #35b.

       -b, --background=colordesc
              Define  a  different  color  to  use for the background of the text to display than
              white. For possible values, see above.

       -i, --invert
              Switch the roles for foreground and background colors. Useful if you prefer  white-
              on-black.

       -n, --font=fontspec
              Define a different font to use than the default sans-serif font of your system. The
              fontspec be the complete name for a truetype font (like "DejaVu Sans" or "Bitstream
              Vera Serif") or just a short font family specification ("serif", "sans-serif").

       -r, --rotate=rotation
              Rotates  the display by rotation*90 degrees counter-clock-wise. So -r 1 rotates the
              display to the left, and -r 2 puts it upside down.

       -a, --align=alignment
              Aligns the text centered (-a 0), left (-a 1) or right (-a 2).

       --     (Double dash) End option parsing. This is used to be able  to  actually  hand  over
              text that starts of with an dash.

       -h, --help
              This  option will give you a short usage message summarizing the recognized options
              and quits.

       -V, --version
              This prints the project name together with its version number quits.

REMOTE CONTROLLING SM

       If sm is called with - as a command line argument, it will read the text to be shown  from
       the  standard  input.  It will read the input until it reaches the end of the file, or the
       form feed character \f, and show the input read so far at once. Newline characters at  the
       beginning or the end are ignored. The input is assumed to be UTF-8 encoded (see utf8(7)).

       This  can  be  used  to  create automatic displays of changing data or similar tricks. For
       example, the following command will create a simple digital watch:

       (while sleep 1; do date +%T; printf '\f'; done) | sm -

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Joachim Breitner <mail@joachim-breitner.de> and updated by
       Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at> to reflect additions for commandline option handling.

                                        November 24, 2012                                   SM(6)