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FIST(1)			    General Commands Manual		       FIST(1)

NAME
       fist - emphatic message generator

SYNOPSIS
       fist [ -c -fpat -l -mtext -n -sfactor -u	]

DESCRIPTION
       fist  prints  an	 image of a clenched fist (unless suppressed by	the -c
       option),	followed by a slogan in	block letters, limited to  16  charac-
       ters  per  line (``Television is	to news	as bumper stickers are to phi-
       losophy.''-Richard M. Nixon).  Options permit you  to  scale  the  fist
       commensurate  to	the iniquities of the Oppressor	(or your printer's pa-
       per size, whichever is smaller),	select	right-	or  left-handed	 blows
       against	the  Empire,  and various other	gimmicks which popped into the
       mind of this Humble Programmer while watching "Ice Station Zebra"  over
       and  over again and watching his	fingernails grow.  Oops...that was an-
       other megalomaniac.  Anyway, here's the latest incarnation of the  fist
       program.	  May  your  banners ever espouse worthy causes, and may those
       truly worthy be achieved.

OPTIONS
       -c	 Chill out: no fist is generated, only the message text.

       -fpat	 Fill the fist with the	text pattern pat,  which  may  be  any
		 string	 of  ASCII/ISO	characters.   If  the pattern contains
		 blanks	or characters interpreted by the shell,	it  should  be
		 quoted	or escaped appropriately.

       -l	 The fist will be left handed.

       -mtext	 Supply	a line of the text to be printed below the fist	on the
		 command  line.	 If the	text contains blank or shell metachar-
		 acters	it should be quoted or escaped.	  Only	the  first  16
		 characters  of	the text will be printed.  You may supply mul-
		 tiple -m options for multi-line text.	 Note  that  you  must
		 also specify the -n option if you don't want fist to read ad-
		 ditional  lines  of  text  from standard input	after printing
		 lines supplied	by the -m option.

       -n	 Do not	read text to be	printed	below the fist	from  standard
		 input.	  Unless you've	specified text with one	or more	-m op-
		 tions,	no text	at all will be printed,	just the fist.	If you
		 specify only the -c and -n options, the only  consequence  of
		 running fist will be the passage of time.

       -sfactor	 Scale	the fist by the	given percentage factor	between	25 and
		 100.

       -u	 Print how to call information.

FILES
       Lines of	text (limited to 16 characters)	are read from  standard	 input
       unless  suppressed  by  the -n option; these lines are printed in block
       letters below the fist.	Input from standard input is terminated	by  an
       end  of	file.  Output is written to standard output.  Input and	output
       are processed strictly sequentially and	hence  fist  may  be  used  in
       pipelines.

BUGS
       The  block  character font is a limited subset of ASCII containing only
       upper case letters, numbers, and	punctuation with character  codes  be-
       tween  hexadecimal  20  and 5F.	The font was originally	created	in the
       late 1960's in UNIVAC 1108 six bit FIELDATA code, and re-shuffled  into
       ASCII  order  when the first port was made to an	ASCII machine in 1981.
       If you'd	like to	add lower case letters,	ISO codes, or full Unicode, go
       right ahead.

       fist will not work on machines which do not  use	 the  ASCII  character
       code  (for  example  EBCDIC machines).  You'll need to shuffle the font
       table or	translate character codes to ASCII before  you	index  it.   I
       don't  have  such  a  machine, so I'm not going to include code I can't
       test.

       Scale factors smaller than about	60 on the -s option produce  infelici-
       tous results: the fist looks like it's wearing a	mitten.

       You can't aggregate options, separate options from their	arguments with
       a  blank, or other cool getopt features because the program doesn't use
       getopt in order to preserve its retro look.

       Over the	last thirty years numerous people have suggested  the  program
       might be	enhanced by adding options to raise two	fingers	(``peace'') or
       only  one finger	(well, you know).  Please send me the code if you make
       this decades-long dream a reality.

SEE ALSO
       ascii(7)

AUTHOR
				     John Walker
			      http://www.fourmilab.ch/

       This software is	in the public domain. Permission to use, copy, modify,
       and distribute this software and	its documentation for any purpose  and
       without	fee is hereby granted, without any conditions or restrictions.
       This software is	provided ``as is'' without  express  or	 implied  war-
       ranty.

4th Berkeley Distribution	  25 NOV 2001			       FIST(1)

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