1FbTerm(1) FbTerm User Manual FbTerm(1)
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6 FbTerm - a fast Frame Buffer based TERMinal emulator for linux
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9 fbterm [options] [--] [command [arguments]]
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12 FbTerm is a fast terminal emulator for linux with frame buffer device
13 or VESA video card. Features include:
14 * mostly as fast as terminal of linux kernel while accelerated
16 scrolling is enabled
17 * select font with fontconfig and draw text with freetype2, same as
18 Qt/Gtk+ based GUI apps
19 * dynamically create/destroy up to 10 windows initially running
20 default shell
21 * record scroll-back history for every window
22 * auto-detect current locale and convert text encoding, support dou‐
23 ble width scripts like Chinese, Japanese etc
24 * switch between configurable additional text encodings with hot keys
25 on the fly
26 * copy/past selected text between windows with mouse when gpm server
27 is running
28 * change the orientation of screen display, a.k.a. screen rotation
29 * lightweight input method framework with client-server architecture
30 * background image for eye candy
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33 command [arguments] may be given to override the built-in choice of
34 shell program. Normally FbTerm checks the SHELL variable. If that is
35 not set, it tries to use the user's login shell program specified in
36 the password file. If that is not set, /bin/sh will be used. You should
37 use the -- argument to separate FbTerm's options from the arguments
38 supplied to the command.
39 FbTerm first uses option value specified in command line arguments,
41 then in the configure file $HOME/.fbtermrc. If that file doesn't
42 exist, FbTerm will create it with default options on startup.
43 -h, --help
45 display the help and exit
46 -V, --version
48 display FbTerm version and exit
49 -v, --verbose
51 display extra FbTerm's information
52 -n, --font-names=text
54 specify font family names
55 -s, --font-size=num
57 specify font pixel size
58 --font-width=num
60 force font width
61 -f, --color-foreground=num
63 specify foreground color
64 -b, --color-background=num
66 specify background color
67 -e, --text-encodings=text
69 specify additional text encodings
70 -r, --screen-rotate=num
72 specify the orientation of screen display
73 -i, --input-method=text
75 specify input method program
76 --cursor-shape=num
78 specify default cursor shape
79 --cursor-interval=num
81 specify cursor flash interval
82 --vesa-mode=num
84 specify VESA video mode
85 --vesa-mode=list
87 display available VESA video modes
88 see comments in $HOME/.fbtermrc for details of these options.
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93 keyboard:
94 CTRL_ALT_E: exit from FbTerm
95 CTRL_ALT_C: create a new window
96 CTRL_ALT_D: destroy current window
97 CTRL_ALT_1: switch to window 1
98 CTRL_ALT_2: switch to window 2
99 CTRL_ALT_3: switch to window 3
100 CTRL_ALT_4: switch to window 4
101 CTRL_ALT_5: switch to window 5
102 CTRL_ALT_6: switch to window 6
103 CTRL_ALT_7: switch to window 7
104 CTRL_ALT_8: switch to window 8
105 CTRL_ALT_9: switch to window 9
106 CTRL_ALT_0: switch to window 10
107 SHIFT_LEFT: switch to previous window
108 SHIFT_RIGHT: switch to next window
109 SHIFT_PAGEUP: history scroll up
110 SHIFT_PAGEDOWN: history scroll down
111 CTRL_ALT_F1: switch to encoding of current locale
112 CTRL_ALT_F2 to CTRL_ALT_F6: switch to additional encodings
113 CTRL_SPACE: toggle input method
114 mouse:
116 move when left button down: select text
117 double click with left button: auto select text
118 click with right button: paste selected text
119 Sometimes above actions will not work, please try to redo them with
121 shift key holding down.
122
124 Before executing FbTerm, make sure there is a frame buffer device in
125 your system, and you have read/write access right with it. Normally
126 FbTerm tries to open /dev/fb0 and /dev/fb/0, environment variable
127 "FRAMEBUFFER" may be used to override this built-in behavior.
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130 From version 1.6, FbTerm adds VESA video card support. By default,
131 FbTerm tries frame buffer device first, if failure, then tries to use
132 VESA device with highest resolution and color depth. option "vesa-mode"
133 may be given to force only open VESA device with the specified video
134 mode. To see available video modes for your VESA card, execute "fbterm
135 --vesa-mode=list".
136 Attention: 1) VESA support requires root privilege to work; 2) do not
138 force to use VESA device on the system with frame buffer device
139 enabled, they maybe conflict with each other.
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142 FbTerm invokes fontconfig to get a font list, if the first font doesn't
143 contain the glyph for the rendering character, it will try second font,
144 then the third, ... and so on, user can see this ordered font list with
145 "fbterm -v".
146 If you don't like the fonts selected by FbTerm, execute "fc-list" to
148 get available fonts, choose favorites as the value of option "font-
149 names". You may also modify the configure file of fontconfig, which
150 will change the behavior of all programs based on fontconfig!
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153 By using iconv, FbTerm converts other encodings to internal encoding
154 UTF-8. On startup, FbTerm checks variable LC_CTYPE to determine the
155 default text encoding, which is binded to shortcut CTRL_ALT_F1. User
156 can specify up to 5 additional encodings with option "text-encodings",
157 for example, as a Chinese user, you set "text-encodings=gbk,big5",
158 shortcut CTRL_ALT_F2 will bind to gbk, and CTRL_ALT_F3 bind to big5.
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161 FbTerm doesn't load and parse any image file with various formats
162 directly, instead it takes a screen shot of frame buffer device on
163 startup if variable FBTERM_BACKGROUND_IMAGE is defined, then uses this
164 screen shot as the background for text rendering. In order to enable
165 background image support, user should first put a image to frame buffer
166 device with a image viewer. A wrapper script using fbv is listed below:
167 #!/bin/bash
169 # fbterm-bi: a wrapper script to enable background image with
171 fbterm
172 # usage: fbterm-bi /path/to/image fbterm-options
173 echo -ne "\e[?25l" # hide cursor
175 fbv -ciuker "$1" << EOF
177 q
178 EOF
179 shift
181 export FBTERM_BACKGROUND_IMAGE=1
182 exec fbterm "$@"
183 Attention: 1) do not enable background image on frame buffer device
185 with 8bpp depth, because FbTerm changes color map table for correct
186 text rendering; 2) if the screen shot is different from the original
187 image, try to use a fast scrolling disabled frame buffer device.
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190 Instead of adding input method directly in FbTerm, a client-server
191 based input method framework is designed to do this work. FbTerm acts
192 as a client, standalone IM program as a server, and they run in sepa‐
193 rated processes.
194 As a normal IM user, you should have a IM program written for FbTerm,
196 and specify it as the value of option "input-method". CTRL_SPACE is
197 the shortcut to activate/deactivate input method.
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201 FbTerm tries to change linux kernel key map table to setup shortcuts,
202 which requires SYS_TTY_CONFIG capability from kernel version 2.6.15. It
203 means FbTerm should be a setuid 0 program to allow non-root users to
204 use shortcuts. FbTerm only switches to root privilege temporarily when
205 changing key map table, we believe it's pretty much free from security
206 problems.
207 If you really don't like this and not use VESA support, and have a
209 linux kernel with file system capabilities enabled, which allow user to
210 give binaries a subset of root's powers without using setuid 0 (offi‐
211 cial kernel 2.6.27 includes it), you can run command "sudo setcap
212 'cap_sys_tty_config+ep' /path/to/fbterm".
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215 According test result, FbTerm spends more than 95% time on painting
216 screen. Speedup painting will significantly increase performance. Here
217 are some suggestions for frame buffer device:
218 * Enable fast scrolling on frame buffer device. The visible screen
220 will be just a window of the video memory, when scrolling, FbTerm only
221 change the start of window, no need to repaint the whole screen.
222 * On Intel P6 family processors the Memory Type Range Registers
224 (MTRRs) may be used to control processor access to memory ranges. If
225 you have video card on a PCI or AGP bus, enabling write-combining
226 allows bus write transfers to be combined into a larger transfer before
227 bursting over the PCI/AGP bus. This can increase performance of
228 FbTerm's paint operations.
229 Maybe you need to enable them manually for your video card. For exam‐
231 ple, by default fast scrolling and write-combining are all disabled on
232 general VESA frame buffer device, GRUB/LILO configure file should be
233 modified to enable them. A GRUB example is showed below:
234 title Ubuntu
236 root (hd0,0)
237 kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=UBUNTU splash vga=0x317
238 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr:3
239 initrd /boot/initrd.img
240 You may check fast scrolling status with "fbterm -v", a message with
242 "scrolling: redraw" means fast scrolling is disabled, otherwise
243 enabled.
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246 Written by dragchan.
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249 Please submit bug reports to <http://code.google.com/p/fbterm/issues>.
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252 Copyright © 2008-2009 dragchan. License GPLv2: GNU GPL version 2 or
253 later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
254 This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
255 There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
256FbTerm 1.6 November 2009 FbTerm(1)