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phosphor(6)		      XScreenSaver manual		   phosphor(6)

NAME
       phosphor	- simulates an old terminal with long-sustain phosphor

SYNOPSIS
       phosphor	 [--display  host:display.screen]  [--window] [--root] [--win-
       dow-id number][--install] [--visual visual] [--font font] [--scale int]
       [--ticks	int] [--delay  usecs]  [--program  command]  [--meta]  [--esc]
       [--bs] [--del] [--fps]

DESCRIPTION
       The phosphor 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.

OPTIONS
       phosphor	accepts	the following options:

       --window
	       Draw on a newly-created window.	This is	the default.

       --root  Draw on the root	window.

       --window-id number
	       Draw on the specified window.

       --install
	       Install a private colormap for the window.

       --visual	visual
	       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.

       --font font-name
	       The  X font to use.  Phosphor can take any font and scale it up
	       to pixelate it.	The default is fixed.

       --scale int
	       How much	to scale the font up: in other words, the size in real
	       pixels of the simulated pixels.	Default	6.

       --ticks int
	       The number of colors to use when	fading to black.  Default 20.

       --delay usecs
	       The speed of the	terminal: how long  to	wait  between  drawing
	       each character.	Default	50000, or about	1/20th second.

       --pty   Launch  the sub-program under a PTY, so that it can address the
	       screen directly.	 This is the default.

       --pipe  Launch the sub-program at the end of a pipe: do not let it  ad-
	       dress the screen	directly.

       --program sh-command
	       The  command  to	run to generate	the text to display.  This op-
	       tion 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  stdout  will	 be printed on phosphor's window.  The
	       characters will be printed  artificially	 slowly,  as  per  the
	       --delay	option	above.	 If  the  program  exits,  it  will be
	       launched	again after 5 seconds.

	       For example:

		 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)"'

	       If you have the festival(1)  text-to-speech  system  installed,
	       you can have it read the	screen as phosphor prints it:

		 phosphor --program \
		     'xscreensaver-text	| tee /dev/stderr | festival --tts'

	       You  can	 also  use  phosphor  as  a  lo-fi replacement for the
	       xterm(1)	and gnome-terminal(1) terminal emulators:

		  phosphor -delay 0 -program $SHELL

       --esc   When the	user types a key with the Alt or Meta keys held	 down,
	       send an ESC character first.  This is the default.

       --meta  When Meta or Alt	are held down, set the high bit	on the charac-
	       ter instead.

       --del   Swap Backspace and Delete.  This	is the default.

       --bs    Do not swap Backspace and Delete.

       --fps   Display the current frame rate and CPU load.

TERMINAL EMULATION
       By  default, phosphor 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 ioctl(2) to fetch information about terminal	parameters and
       window size, which many programs	(such as top(1)) need to run properly.
       phosphor	 will  also  set the environment variable TERM to vt100	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 --root mode under xscreensaver.)

ENVIRONMENT
       DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.

       XENVIRONMENT
	       to get the name of a resource file that	overrides  the	global
	       resources stored	in the RESOURCE_MANAGER	property.

       XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW
	       The window ID to	use with --root.

       TERM    to inform the sub-process of the	type of	terminal emulation.

SEE ALSO
       xscreensaver(1),	 xscreensaver-text(6),	fortune(1),  apple2(6),	 star-
       wars(6),	fontglide(6), ljlatest(6), dadadodo(1),	webcollage(6),	drift-
       net(1) EtherPEG,	EtherPeek, console_codes(4).

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 1999 by Jamie Zawinski.  Permission to use, copy, modify,
       distribute,  and	 sell this software and	its documentation for any pur-
       pose 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	repre-
       sentations are made about the suitability of this software for any pur-
       pose.  It is provided "as is" without express or	implied	warranty.

AUTHOR
       Jamie  Zawinski	<jwz@jwz.org>,	27-Apr-99.  Pty	and vt100 emulation by
       Fredrik Tolf <fredrik@dolda2000.com>.

X Version 11		      6.09 (07-Jun-2024)		   phosphor(6)

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