Ubuntu Manpage: starwars - draws a perspective text crawl, like at the beginning of the movie

Provided by: xscreensaver-gl-extra_6.08+dfsg1-1ubuntu3_amd64

NAME

       starwars - draws a perspective text crawl, like at the beginning of the movie

SYNOPSIS

       starwars  [--display  host:display.screen]  [--window]  [--root]  [--window-id  number] [--visual visual]
       [--delay microseconds] [--program command] [--size integer ] [--columns  integer]  [--wrap  |  --no-wrap]
       [--left  | --center | --right] [--lines integer] [--spin float] [--steps integer] [--delay usecs] [--font
       xlfd] [--no-textures] [--no-smooth] [--no-thick] [--fps]

DESCRIPTION

       The starwars program runs another program to generate a stream of text, then animates that text receeding
       into the background at an angle, in front of a star field.

OPTIONS

starwars accepts the following options:

--window
Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.

--root Draw on the root window.

--window-id number
Draw on the specified window.

--install
Install a private colormap for the window.

--visual visual
Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number
(decimal or hex) of a specific visual.

--program sh-command
The command to run to generate the text to display. This option may be any string acceptable to
/bin/sh. The program will be run at the end of a pipe, and any characters that it prints to
stdout will be printed on the starwars window. If the program exits, it will be launched again
after we have processed all the text it produced.

Note that starwars is not a terminal emulator: programs that try to directly address the screen
will not do what you might expect. This program merely draws the characters on the screen left
to right, top to bottom, in perspective. Lines (may) wrap when they reach the right edge.

In other words, programs like fortune(1) will work, but programs like top(1) won't.

Some examples:

starwars -program 'cat /usr/src/linux*/README'
starwars -columns 30 -program 'ping www.starwars.com'
starwars -left -no-wrap -program 'ps -auxwwf'
starwars -left -no-wrap -columns 45 -program 'top -bn1'
starwars -left -columns 40 -program 'od -txC /dev/urandom'
starwars -font fixed -program 'od -txC /dev/urandom'

--size integer
How large a font to use, in points. (Well, in some arbitrary unit we're calling "points" for the
sake of argument.) Default: 24.

--columns integer
How many columns of text should be visible on the bottom line of the screen. Default: 60.

Only one of --columns and --size may be specified; if both are specified, --columns takes
priority.

--wrap Word-wrap lines when they reach the rightmost column. This is the default.

--no-wrap
Do not word-wrap: just let the lines go off the right side of the screen.

--left | --center | --right
Whether to align the text flush left, centered, or flush right. The default is centered.

--lines integer
How many lines should be allowed to be on the screen before they fall off the end. The default
is 125.

--spin float
The star field on the background slowly rotates. This is how fast. The default is 0.03.

--steps integer
How many steps should be used to scroll a single line. The default is 35. If the animation
looks jerky to you, increase this number.

--delay usecs
The delay between steps of the animation; default is 40000 (1/25th second.)

--font font-name
The name of the font to use. For best effect, this should be a large font (at least 36 points.)
The bigger the font, the better looking the characters will be. Note that the size of this font
affects only the clarity of the characters, not their size on the screen: for that, use the
--size or --columns options.

Default: -*-utopia-bold-r-normal-*-*-720-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

--no-textures
Instead of texture-mapping a real font to render the text, use a built-in font composed of line
segments. On graphics cards without texture support, the line-segment font will have much better
performance.

--no-smooth
When using the line-segment font, turn off anti-aliasing of the lines used to draw the font.
This will make the text blockier, but may improve performance.

--no-thick
When using the line-segment font, turn off use of thick lines for the characters that are close
to the foreground. This will make the text appear unnaturally skinny, but may improve
performance.

--fps Display the current frame rate, CPU load, and polygon count.

ENVIRONMENT

       DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.

       XENVIRONMENT
               to  get  the  name  of  a  resource  file  that  overrides  the  global  resources  stored in the
               RESOURCE_MANAGER property.

       XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW
               The window ID to use with --root.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright  ©  1998-2005  by  Jamie  Zawinski  and  Claudio  Matsuoka.   Permission  to use, copy, modify,
       distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted  without  fee,
       provided  that  the  above  copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
       this permission notice appear in  supporting  documentation.   No  representations  are  made  about  the
       suitability  of  this  software  for  any  purpose.   It  is  provided "as is" without express or implied
       warranty.

AUTHOR

       Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org> and Claudio Matauoka <claudio@helllabs.org>