1phosphor(6x) XScreenSaver manual phosphor(6x)
2
6 phosphor - simulates an old terminal with long-sustain phosphor
7
9 phosphor [--display host:display.screen] [--window] [--root] [--win‐
10 dow-id number][--install] [--visual visual] [--font font] [--scale int]
11 [--ticks int] [--delay usecs] [--program command] [--meta] [--esc]
12 [--bs] [--del] [--fps]
13
15 The phosphor program draws text on the screen in a very large pixelated
16 font that looks like an old low resolution dumb tty. The pixels flare
17 and fade out as if the phosphor was very long-sustain. It is also a
18 fully functional vt100 terminal emulator.
19
21 phosphor accepts the following options:
22 --window
24 Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
25 --root Draw on the root window.
27 --window-id number
29 Draw on the specified window.
30 --install
32 Install a private colormap for the window.
33 --visual visual
35 Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a
36 visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific
37 visual.
38 --font font-name
40 The X font to use. Phosphor can take any font and scale it up
41 to pixelate it. The default is fixed.
42 --scale int
44 How much to scale the font up: in other words, the size in real
45 pixels of the simulated pixels. Default 6.
46 --ticks int
48 The number of colors to use when fading to black. Default 20.
49 --delay usecs
51 The speed of the terminal: how long to wait between drawing
52 each character. Default 50000, or about 1/20th second.
53 --pty Launch the sub-program under a PTY, so that it can address the
55 screen directly. This is the default.
56 --pipe Launch the sub-program at the end of a pipe: do not let it ad‐
58 dress the screen directly.
59 --program sh-command
61 The command to run to generate the text to display. This op‐
62 tion may be any string acceptable to /bin/sh. The program will
63 be run at the end of a pty or pipe, and any characters that it
64 prints to stdout will be printed on phosphor's window. The
65 characters will be printed artificially slowly, as per the
66 --delay option above. If the program exits, it will be
67 launched again after 5 seconds.
68 For example:
70 phosphor -program 'cat /usr/src/linux*/README'
72 phosphor -program 'ping localhost'
73 phosphor -program 'ps -e'
74 phosphor -program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random'
75 phosphor -program 'cat /dev/random'
76 phosphor -scale 2 -geom =1280x1024 -program 'top'
77 phosphor -scale 4 -geom =1280x1024 \
78 -program 'mtr www.kernel.org'
79 phosphor -program 'xemacs -nw -q -f life'
80 phosphor -scale 5 -geom =1280x1024 \
81 -program 'xemacs -nw -q --eval "(hanoi 5)"'
82 If you have the festival(1) text-to-speech system installed,
84 you can have it read the screen as phosphor prints it:
85 phosphor -program \
87 'xscreensaver-text | tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts'
88 You can also use phosphor as a lo-fi replacement for the
90 xterm(1) and gnome-terminal(1) terminal emulators:
91 phosphor -delay 0 -program tcsh
93 --esc When the user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held
95 down, send an ESC character first. This is the default.
96 --meta When Meta or Alt are held down, set the high bit on the charac‐
98 ter instead.
99 --del Swap Backspace and Delete. This is the default.
101 --bs Do not swap Backspace and Delete.
103 --fps Display the current frame rate and CPU load.
105
107 By default, phosphor allocates a pseudo-tty for the sub-process to run
108 under. This has the desirable side effect that the program will be
109 able to use ioctl(2) to fetch information about terminal parameters and
110 window size, which many programs (such as top(1)) need to run properly.
111 phosphor will also set the environment variable TERM to vt100 in the
112 child process.
113 Any characters typed on the phosphor window will be passed along to the
115 sub-process. (Note that this only works when running in "window" mode,
116 not when running in --root mode under xscreensaver.)
117
119 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
120 XENVIRONMENT
122 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
123 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
124 XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW
126 The window ID to use with --root.
127 TERM to inform the sub-process of the type of terminal emulation.
129
131 xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-text(6x), fortune(1), apple2(6x), star‐
132 wars(6x), fontglide(6x), ljlatest(6x), dadadodo(1), webcollage(6x),
133 driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek, console_codes(4).
134
136 Copyright © 1999 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify,
137 distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any pur‐
138 pose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
139 notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
140 this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No repre‐
141 sentations are made about the suitability of this software for any pur‐
142 pose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
143
145 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 27-Apr-99. Pty and vt100 emulation by
146 Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>.
147X Version 11 6.06-1.fc37 (12-Dec-2022) phosphor(6x)