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 'ping 8.8.8.8'
72 phosphor --program 'ps -e'
73 phosphor --program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random'
74 phosphor --program 'cat /dev/random'
75 phosphor --scale 2 --program 'top'
76 phosphor --scale 4 --program 'mtr www.kernel.org'
77 phosphor --scale 4 --program 'emacs -nw -q -f life'
78 phosphor --scale 4 --program 'emacs -nw -q --eval "(hanoi 5)"'
79 If you have the festival(1) text-to-speech system installed,
81 you can have it read the screen as phosphor prints it:
82 phosphor --program \
84 'xscreensaver-text | tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts'
85 You can also use phosphor as a lo-fi replacement for the
87 xterm(1) and gnome-terminal(1) terminal emulators:
88 phosphor -delay 0 -program $SHELL
90 --esc When the user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held down,
93 send an ESC character first. This is the default.
94 --meta When Meta or Alt are held down, set the high bit on the charac‐
96 ter instead.
97 --del Swap Backspace and Delete. This is the default.
99 --bs Do not swap Backspace and Delete.
101 --fps Display the current frame rate and CPU load.
103
105 By default, phosphor allocates a pseudo-tty for the sub-process to run
106 under. This has the desirable side effect that the program will be
107 able to use ioctl(2) to fetch information about terminal parameters and
108 window size, which many programs (such as top(1)) need to run properly.
109 phosphor will also set the environment variable TERM to vt100 in the
110 child process.
111 Any characters typed on the phosphor window will be passed along to the
113 sub-process. (Note that this only works when running in "window" mode,
114 not when running in --root mode under xscreensaver.)
115
117 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
118 XENVIRONMENT
120 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
121 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
122 XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW
124 The window ID to use with --root.
125 TERM to inform the sub-process of the type of terminal emulation.
127
129 xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-text(6x), fortune(1), apple2(6x), star‐
130 wars(6x), fontglide(6x), ljlatest(6x), dadadodo(1), webcollage(6x),
131 driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek, console_codes(4).
132
134 Copyright © 1999 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify,
135 distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any pur‐
136 pose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
137 notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
138 this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No repre‐
139 sentations are made about the suitability of this software for any pur‐
140 pose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
141
143 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 27-Apr-99. Pty and vt100 emulation by
144 Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>.
145X Version 11 6.08-1.fc39 (17-Oct-2023) phosphor(6x)