1phosphor(6x)                  XScreenSaver manual                 phosphor(6x)
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NAME

6       phosphor - simulates an old terminal with long-sustain phosphor
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SYNOPSIS

9       phosphor  [-display  host:display.screen]  [-window] [-root] [-install]
10       [-visual visual] [-font font] [-scale int] [-ticks int] [-delay  usecs]
11       [-program command] [-meta] [-esc] [-bs] [-del] [-fps]
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DESCRIPTION

14       The phosphor program draws text on the screen in a very large pixelated
15       font that looks like an old low resolution dumb tty.  The pixels  flare
16       and  fade  out  as if the phosphor was very long-sustain.  It is also a
17       fully functional vt100 terminal emulator.
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OPTIONS

20       phosphor accepts the following options:
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22       -window Draw on a newly-created window.  This is the default.
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24       -root   Draw on the root window.
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26       -install
27               Install a private colormap for the window.
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29       -visual visual
30               Specify which visual to use.  Legal values are the  name  of  a
31               visual  class,  or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific
32               visual.
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34       -font font-name
35               The X font to use.  Phosphor can take any font and scale it  up
36               to pixelate it.  The default is fixed.
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38       -scale int
39               How much to scale the font up: in other words, the size in real
40               pixels of the simulated pixels.  Default 6.
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42       -ticks int
43               The number of colors to use when fading to black.  Default 20.
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45       -delay usecs
46               The speed of the terminal: how long  to  wait  between  drawing
47               each character.  Default 50000, or about 1/20th second.
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49       -pty    Launch  the sub-program under a PTY, so that it can address the
50               screen directly.  This is the default.
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52       -pipe   Launch the sub-program at the end of a pipe: do not let it  ad‐
53               dress the screen directly.
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55       -program sh-command
56               The  command  to run to generate the text to display.  This op‐
57               tion may be any string acceptable to /bin/sh.  The program will
58               be  run at the end of a pty or pipe, and any characters that it
59               prints to stdout will be printed  on  phosphor's  window.   The
60               characters will be printed artificially slowly, as per the -de‐
61               lay option above.  If the program exits, it  will  be  launched
62               again after 5 seconds.
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64               For example:
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66                    phosphor -program 'cat /usr/src/linux*/README'
67                    phosphor -program 'ping localhost'
68                    phosphor -program 'ps -e'
69                    phosphor -program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random'
70                    phosphor -program 'cat /dev/random'
71                    phosphor -scale 2 -geom =1280x1024 -program 'top'
72                    phosphor -scale 4 -geom =1280x1024 \
73                             -program 'mtr www.kernel.org'
74                    phosphor -program 'xemacs -nw -q -f life'
75                    phosphor -scale 5 -geom =1280x1024 \
76                             -program 'xemacs -nw -q --eval "(hanoi 5)"'
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78               If  you  have  the festival(1) text-to-speech system installed,
79               you can have it read the screen as phosphor prints it:
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81                    phosphor -program \
82                        'xscreensaver-text | tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts'
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84               You can also use  phosphor  as  a  lo-fi  replacement  for  the
85               xterm(1) and gnome-terminal(1) terminal emulators:
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87                    phosphor -delay 0 -program tcsh
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89               -esc  When  the user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held
90               down, send an ESC character first.  This is the default.
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92       -meta   When Meta or Alt are held down, set the high bit on the charac‐
93               ter instead.
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95       -del    Swap Backspace and Delete.  This is the default.
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97       -bs     Do not swap Backspace and Delete.
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99       -fps    Display the current frame rate and CPU load.
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TERMINAL EMULATION

102       By  default, phosphor allocates a pseudo-tty for the sub-process to run
103       under.  This has the desirable side effect that  the  program  will  be
104       able to use ioctl(2) to fetch information about terminal parameters and
105       window size, which many programs (such as top(1)) need to run properly.
106       phosphor  will  also  set the environment variable TERM to vt100 in the
107       child process.
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109       Any characters typed on the phosphor window will be passed along to the
110       sub-process.  (Note that this only works when running in "window" mode,
111       not when running in -root mode under xscreensaver.)
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ENVIRONMENT

114       DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
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116       XENVIRONMENT
117               to get the name of a resource file that  overrides  the  global
118               resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
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120       TERM    to inform the sub-process of the type of terminal emulation.
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SEE ALSO

123       xscreensaver(1),  xscreensaver-text(6x),  fortune(1), apple2(6x), star‐
124       wars(6x),  fontglide(6x),  ljlatest(6x),  dadadodo(1),  webcollage(6x),
125       driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek, console_codes(4).
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128       Copyright  ©  1999 by Jamie Zawinski.  Permission to use, copy, modify,
129       distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for  any  pur‐
130       pose  is  hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
131       notice appear in all copies and that both  that  copyright  notice  and
132       this  permission  notice appear in supporting documentation.  No repre‐
133       sentations are made about the suitability of this software for any pur‐
134       pose.  It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
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AUTHOR

137       Jamie  Zawinski  <jwz@jwz.org>,  27-Apr-99.  Pty and vt100 emulation by
138       Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>.
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142X Version 11               6.04-1.fc36 (06-Jun-2022)              phosphor(6x)
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