figlet: a totally useless, therefore essential tool
March 25th, 2007 edited by TinchoEntry submitted by arno. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute !
FIGlet is a command line tool. It’s purpose is to draw nicely formatted big characters. For example, the output of command figlet debian is:
_ _ _
__| | ___| |__ (_) __ _ _ __
/ _` |/ _ \ ‘_ \| |/ _` | ‘_ \
| (_| | __/ |_) | | (_| | | | |
\__,_|\___|_.__/|_|\__,_|_| |_|
To get more fancy outputs, FIGlet comes with a set of 18 fonts, and more than 400 fonts are available for download. For example, bubble font writes each character encircled in a bubble, and script font imitates handwriting. You can get the list of installed fonts, along with output samples, with command showfigfonts. Here is output of figlet -f script debian:
_
| | | o
__| _ | | __, _ _
/ | |/ |/ \_| / | / |/ |
\_/|_/|__/\_/ |_/\_/|_/ | |_/
FIGlet stands for Frank, Ian and Glenn’s LETters
, because it was inspired by Frank’s email signature, written (mostly) by Glenn, and Ian helped. First version was written in spring 1991. FIGlet has since become a well known software in (and even outside) the UNIX world, and has been declined in multiple ways, like a XChat, or an Eclipse plug-in, a PHP class, and many web based FIGlets.
Related software
People who like to write fun stuff may also be interested in command banner from package bsdmainutils. It also outputs large characters, but unlike FIGlet, draws them vertically. It was not designed as a fun stuff, but as a way to separate printings documents from each other. Other tools have been designed specifically to write fun stuff. Among them, Cowsay is one of the most worthwhile. Toilet is very similar to FIGlet for Unicode systems. It comes with many new features, such as colour fonts, or HTML and SVG output.
Links:
So, FIGlet is a really nice software that will make your emails cool and pleasant. But please, do not overuse it in mailing lists!
FIGlet is available in both Debian and Ubuntu in all distributions.
March 25th, 2007 at 6:31 am
__ _ _ __ ___ _____ ___ _
/ _` | ‘__/ _ \ / _ \ \ / / | | |
| (_| | | | (_) | (_) \ V /| |_| |
\__, |_| \___/ \___/ \_/ \__, |
|___/ |___/
March 25th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Figlet is non-free according to vrms. In fact it’s the only package that my server bitches about on a monthly basis.
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=figlet&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all
I am not complaining about the license of figlet, because clearly I use it. I was just surprised that the Debian Package of the Day would recommend non-free software.
Maybe recommend toilet instead?
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=toilet&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all
alan@wopr:~$ toilet figlet
▗▀▖▗ ▜ ▐
▐ ▄ ▞▀▌▐ ▞▀▖▜▀
▜▀ ▐ ▚▄▌▐ ▛▀ ▐ ▖
▐ ▀▘▗▄▘ ▘▝▀▘ ▀
alan@wopr:~$ figlet toilet
_ _ _ _
| |_ ___ (_) | ___| |_
| __/ _ \| | |/ _ \ __|
| || (_) | | | __/ |_
\__\___/|_|_|\___|\__|
March 25th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
I beg to differ - figlet is *not* totally useless. I customize /etc/issue.net (used as the ssh login banner) and use figlet write the hostname in large, friendly letters.
Why? It’s a dead simple way of knowing which machine you’re on when you log in at 3am to debug a problem. It can save you the embarassment and annoyance of rebooting the wrong machine…
March 26th, 2007 at 2:35 am
_
_____ _____ ___| |_
/ __\ \ /\ / / _ \/ _ \ __|
\__ \\ V V / __/ __/ |_
|___/ \_/\_/ \___|\___|\__|
March 26th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Figlet is distributed under the Academic Licence v2.1. Version 3.0 of this licence is an OSI approved open-source licence.
ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/program/unix/figlet222/LICENSE
http://www.opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/afl-3.0.php
March 27th, 2007 at 5:05 am
i remember using this package on slackware 7 x)
this is package is f*cking great
March 27th, 2007 at 9:24 am
As Bob (#3) said, it’s very nice for customizing /etc/issue.net. :)
I might use it for a Petals Around the Rose wannabe, too.
March 29th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Actually, ‘banner’ is kinda nice, too. :)
April 6th, 2007 at 12:48 am
This is great for making simple captchas. Thanks.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:24 pm
great stuff lads !
me like it :)
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 am
Alan, I’m wondering why you say FIGlet is not free… Glenn & I had always intended for it to be free, and we thought we had chosen a license which made sure it was free.