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] [-install]
10 [-visual visual] [-font font] [-scale int] [-ticks int] [-delay usecs]
11 [-program command] [-meta] [-esc] [-bs] [-del]
12
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.
18
20 phosphor accepts the following options:
21 -window Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default.
23 -root Draw on the root window.
25 -install
27 Install a private colormap for the window.
28 -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.
33 -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.
37 -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.
41 -ticks int
43 The number of colors to use when fading to black. Default 20.
44 -delay usecs
46 The speed of the terminal: how long to wait between drawing
47 each character. Default 50000, or about 1/20th second.
48 -pty Launch the sub-program under a PTY, so that it can address the
50 screen directly. This is the default.
51 -pipe Launch the sub-program at the end of a pipe: do not let it
53 address the screen directly.
54 -program sh-command
56 The command to run to generate the text to display. This
57 option may be any string acceptable to /bin/sh. The program
58 will be run at the end of a pty or pipe, and any characters
59 that it prints to stdout will be printed on phosphor's window.
60 The characters will be printed artificially slowly, as per the
61 -delay option above. If the program exits, it will be launched
62 again after 5 seconds.
63 For example:
65 phosphor -program 'cat /usr/src/linux*/README'
66 phosphor -program 'ping localhost'
67 phosphor -program 'ps -e'
68 phosphor -program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random'
69 phosphor -program 'cat /dev/random'
70 phosphor -scale 2 -geom =1280x1024 -program 'top'
71 phosphor -scale 4 -geom =1280x1024 \
72 -program 'mtr www.kernel.org'
73 phosphor -program 'xemacs -nw -q -f life'
74 phosphor -scale 5 -geom =1280x1024 \
75 -program 'xemacs -nw -q --eval "(hanoi 5)"'
76 If you have the festival(1) text-to-speech system installed,
77 you can have it read the screen as phosphor prints it:
78 phosphor -program \
79 'xscreensaver-text | tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts'
80 You can also use phosphor as a lo-fi replacement for the
81 xterm(1) and gnome-terminal(1) terminal emulators:
82 phosphor -delay 0 -program tcsh
83 -esc When the user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held down,
85 send an ESC character first. This is the default.
86 -meta When Meta or Alt are held down, set the high bit on the charac‐
88 ter instead.
89 -del Swap Backspace and Delete. This is the default.
91 -bs Do not swap Backspace and Delete.
93
95 By default, phosphor allocates a pseudo-tty for the sub-process to run
96 under. This has the desirable side effect that the program will be
97 able to use ioctl(2) to fetch information about terminal parameters and
98 window size, which many programs (such as top(1)) need to run properly.
99 phosphor will also set the environment variable TERM to vt100 in the
100 child process.
101 Any characters typed on the phosphor window will be passed along to the
103 sub-process. (Note that this only works when running in "window" mode,
104 not when running in -root mode under xscreensaver.)
105
107 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
108 XENVIRONMENT
110 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
111 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
112 TERM to inform the sub-process of the type of terminal emulation.
114
116 xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-text(1), fortune(1), apple2(6x), star‐
117 wars(6x), fontglide(6x), ljlatest(6x), dadadodo(1), webcollage(6x),
118 driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek, console_codes(4).
119
121 Copyright © 1999 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify,
122 distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any pur‐
123 pose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright
124 notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
125 this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No repre‐
126 sentations are made about the suitability of this software for any pur‐
127 pose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
128
130 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 27-Apr-99. Pty and vt100 emulation by
131 Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>.
132X Version 11 5.05-3 (06-Apr-2008) phosphor(6x)