.TH phosphor 6 "6.08 (10-Oct-2023)" "X Version 11" "XScreenSaver manual" .SH NAME phosphor \- simulates an old terminal with long-sustain phosphor .SH SYNOPSIS .B phosphor [\-\-display \fIhost:display.screen\fP] [\-\-window] [\-\-root] [\-\-window\-id \fInumber\fP][\-\-install] [\-\-visual \fIvisual\fP] [\-\-font \fIfont\fP] [\-\-scale \fIint\fP] [\-\-ticks \fIint\fP] [\-\-delay \fIusecs\fP] [\-\-program \fIcommand\fP] [\-\-meta] [\-\-esc] [\-\-bs] [\-\-del] [\-\-fps] .SH DESCRIPTION The \fIphosphor\fP program draws text on the screen in a very large pixelated font that looks like an old low resolution dumb tty. The pixels flare and fade out as if the phosphor was very long-sustain. It is also a fully functional vt100 terminal emulator. .SH OPTIONS .I phosphor accepts the following options: .TP 8 .B \-\-window Draw on a newly-created window. This is the default. .TP 8 .B \-\-root Draw on the root window. .TP 8 .B \-\-window\-id \fInumber\fP Draw on the specified window. .TP 8 .B \-\-install Install a private colormap for the window. .TP 8 .B \-\-visual \fIvisual\fP\fP Specify which visual to use. Legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual. .TP 8 .B \-\-font \fIfont-name\fP The X font to use. Phosphor can take any font and scale it up to pixelate it. The default is \fIfixed\fP. .TP 8 .B \-\-scale \fIint\fP How much to scale the font up: in other words, the size in real pixels of the simulated pixels. Default 6. .TP 8 .B \-\-ticks \fIint\fP The number of colors to use when fading to black. Default 20. .TP 8 .B \-\-delay \fIusecs\fP The speed of the terminal: how long to wait between drawing each character. Default 50000, or about 1/20th second. .TP 8 .B \-\-pty Launch the sub-program under a PTY, so that it can address the screen directly. This is the default. .TP 8 .B \-\-pipe Launch the sub-program at the end of a pipe: do not let it address the screen directly. .TP 8 .B \-\-program \fIsh-command\fP The command to run to generate the text to display. This option may be any string acceptable to /bin/sh. The program will be run at the end of a pty or pipe, and any characters that it prints to \fIstdout\fP will be printed on phosphor's window. The characters will be printed artificially slowly, as per the \fI\-\-delay\fP option above. If the program exits, it will be launched again after 5 seconds. For example: .nf .sp phosphor --program 'ping 8.8.8.8' phosphor --program 'ps -e' phosphor --program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random' phosphor --program 'cat /dev/random' phosphor --scale 2 --program 'top' phosphor --scale 4 --program 'mtr www.kernel.org' phosphor --scale 4 --program 'emacs -nw -q -f life' phosphor --scale 4 --program 'emacs -nw -q --eval "(hanoi 5)"' .sp .fi If you have the .BR festival (1) text-to-speech system installed, you can have it read the screen as phosphor prints it: .nf .sp phosphor --program \\ 'xscreensaver-text | tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts' .sp .fi You can also use \fIphosphor\fP as a lo-fi replacement for the .BR xterm (1) and .BR gnome-terminal (1) terminal emulators: .nf .sp phosphor -delay 0 -program $SHELL .sp .fi .TP 8 .B \-\-esc When the user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held down, send an ESC character first. This is the default. .TP 8 .B \-\-meta When Meta or Alt are held down, set the high bit on the character instead. .TP 8 .B \-\-del Swap Backspace and Delete. This is the default. .TP 8 .B \-\-bs Do not swap Backspace and Delete. .TP 8 .B \-\-fps Display the current frame rate and CPU load. .SH TERMINAL EMULATION By default, \fIphosphor\fP allocates a pseudo-tty for the sub-process to run under. This has the desirable side effect that the program will be able to use .BR ioctl (2) to fetch information about terminal parameters and window size, which many programs (such as .BR top (1)) need to run properly. \fIphosphor\fP will also set the environment variable \fITERM\fP to \fIvt100\fP in the child process. Any characters typed on the phosphor window will be passed along to the sub-process. (Note that this only works when running in "window" mode, not when running in \fI\-\-root\fP mode under xscreensaver.) .SH ENVIRONMENT .PP .TP 8 .B DISPLAY to get the default host and display number. .TP 8 .B XENVIRONMENT to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property. .TP 8 .B XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW The window ID to use with \fI\-\-root\fP. .TP 8 .B TERM to inform the sub-process of the type of terminal emulation. .SH SEE ALSO .BR xscreensaver (1), .BR xscreensaver\-text (6), .BR fortune (1), .BR apple2 (6), .BR starwars (6), .BR fontglide (6), .BR ljlatest (6), .BR dadadodo (1), .BR webcollage (6), .BR driftnet (1) .BR EtherPEG , .BR EtherPeek , .BR console_codes (4). .SH COPYRIGHT Copyright \(co 1999 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. .SH AUTHOR Jamie Zawinski , 27-Apr-99. Pty and vt100 emulation by Fredrik Tolf .