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slrnface(1)		    General Commands Manual		   slrnface(1)

NAME
       slrnface	- show X-Faces in X11 terminal emulator

SYNOPSIS
       slrnface	 [ -xOffsetChar	x_char_offset ]	[ -yOffsetChar y_char_offset ]
       [  -xOffsetPix  x_pixel_offset  ]  [  -yOffsetPix  y_pixel_offset  ]  [
       -XFacePad  left_padding ] [ -ink	fg_color ] [ -paper bg_color ] [ -pad-
       Color pad_color ]

DESCRIPTION
       The slrnface helper utility can be used from slrn(1), mutt(1) or	 simi-
       lar  programs  to show X-Faces in Usenet	articles or mail messages when
       those programs are run in an X11	terminal emulator. This	utility	is not
       intended	to be run directly from	the command line.  Instead, the	master
       programs	should be configured to	invoke slrnface	when appropriate.

       Different terminal emulators have different screen layouts. Some	 might
       have scroolbars (on either side), a menubar or something	else. Terminal
       window  which  slrnface uses might contain some of these	"decorations,"
       but it is impossible to determine if that is  the  case	at  run	 time.
       Therefore it is impossible to determine the exact location at which the
       X11  window  with  the X-Face image should be placed. Default hardcoded
       values are appropriate for several terminal emulators, but not for  all
       of them.	The placement can be controlled	by command line	arguments, but
       it is suggested to use X	resources for this task.

       While slrnface is running and showing X-Face, the left mouse button can
       be used to move the window.

RESOURCES
       The slrnface helper is controlled by the	resources set for the terminal
       emulator	in which it runs, not for the slrnface class or	instance. That
       is because correct execution entirely depends on	the master program and
       the  geometry of	the terminal emulator in use and has little to do with
       slrnface	itself.	All resources have a command  line  parameter  equiva-
       lent.

       However,	 a  lot	of popular terminal emulators have a certain amount of
       hardcoded brain damage and setting X resources will not have any	effect
       with them. This usually happens because of illegal  characters  in  the
       WM_CLASS	 property.  In those cases command line	arguments are the only
       remaining option.

	    Resource		   Command line	parameter   Default value
	    --------------------------------------------------------------
	    slrnface.xOffsetChar   -xOffsetChar		    0
	    slrnface.yOffsetChar   -yOffsetChar		    1
	    slrnface.xOffsetPix	   -xOffsetPix		    0
	    slrnface.yOffsetPix	   -yOffsetPix		    2
	    slrnface.XFacePad	   -XFacePad		    0
	    slrnface.ink	   -ink			    black
	    slrnface.paper	   -paper		    white
	    slrnface.padColor	   -padColor		    black

   xOffsetChar
       The horizontal offset for the X-Face window from	the  terminal's	 upper
       right corner expressed in character units.

   yOffsetChar
       The  vertical  offset  for  the X-Face window from the terminal's upper
       right corner expressed in character units.  The exact value  in	pixels
       will  be	 calculated  at	 run time, as well as the pixel	equivalent for
       xOffestChar.  There are some lousily coded terminals which are not very
       helpful with this, so the calculation might not be perfect.

   xOffsetPix
       The horizontal offset for the X-Face window from	the  terminal's	 upper
       right corner expressed in pixels.

   yOffsetPix
       The  vertical  offset  for  the X-Face window from the terminal's upper
       right corner expressed in pixels. This value is added to	the  character
       offset  provided	 by  the yOffsetChar resource and the resulting	sum is
       substracted from	the vertical coordinate	of the terminal's upper	 right
       corner.	The  equivalent	 calculation  for the horizontal coordinate is
       done with the xOffsetChar and  xOffsetPix  resources.  In  both	cases,
       pixel value resources are provided for finer control.

   XFacePad
       This value tells	slrnface how many pixels should	be cleared on the left
       side  of	 the X-Face image. In the case of long subject lines the image
       may be displayed	over characters	and having some	spacing	 between  them
       would be	beneficial.

   ink
       This is the foreground color for	the X-Face image. The more common name
       for  this  resource  is foreground.  However, that name is not used be-
       cause there is a	high probability that it would be inherited  from  the
       terminal's  resources.  A  lot  of  users use light foreground and dark
       background for terminals. Since X-Faces should normally be viewed  with
       dark  foreground	 on  light  background,	inheriting the colors from the
       terminal	setup would present a negative image by	default. In  order  to
       avoid that, slrnface uses different resource name.

   paper
       This is the background color for	the X-Face image.

   padColor
       This is the color for the padding region	set with XFacePad resource.

EXAMPLES
       The following example demonstrates how to set resources for xterm.

   Example 1: horizontal offsets for xterm
       Since  slrnface looks at	the resources defined for the terminal's class
       and name, an example setting is:

       xterm.slrnface.xOffsetChar:     1
       xterm.slrnface.xOffsetPix:      2

       It is better to use the application name, rather	 than  class,  because
       some  other  terminals  use  XTerm as their class, since	they try to be
       feature compatible. However, they might not have	the same  screen  lay-
       out,  so	 resources  set	for the	terminal class might not yield the de-
       sired effect in all terminals.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       DISPLAY	      The name of the display where the	 terminal  runs.  This
		      environment variable is the only way to pass it to slrn-
		      face.

       WINDOWID	      Used  for	determining terminal's X window	id. It must be
		      set by a terminal	emulator.

       LANG, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES
		      These environment	variables will be used when  determin-
		      ing the location of the appropriate resource file.

EXIT STATUS
       The  slrnface  helper  doesn't print any	diagnostic, because it doesn't
       know if that is the appropriate action. In cases	when diagnostic	output
       is appropriate, it can't	guarantee that the output would	be visible  to
       the  user. Therefore it returns distinct	error status for every kind of
       problem and relies on the parent	process	to take	 the  appropriate  ac-
       tion.

       It should be noted that slrnface	forks early in its execution. The par-
       ent  process exits immediately, returning success status	to its parent.
       The child process continues execution, reading commands from  the  FIFO
       in the $HOME/.slrnfaces directory and executing them as appropriate. In
       the  case  where	there is a problem with	the process' startup, the fork
       doesn't happen and slrnface exits immediately, returning	the  appropri-
       ate error status. The following exit values are returned:

       0   Successful completion.

       1   slrnface couldn't connect to	the display.

       2   Terminal  emulator  didn't set the WINDOWID environment variable or
	   its value was invalid.

       3   slrnface couldn't find its controlling terminal.

       4   Terminal's width or height are not set.

       5   There was a problem with the	FIFO setup.

       6   fork(2) failed.

FILES
       $HOME/.slrnfaces/*  A named pipe	used for communication	between	 slrn-
			   face	and the	master proces.
       slrnface.sl	   An  example	S-Lang	hooks  for setting up slrnface
			   with	slrn(1).

SEE ALSO
       slrn(1),	mutt(1), X11(5), xprop(1), xterm(1), fork(2)

BUGS
       Multiple	X-Faces	are not	supported.

AUTHOR
       Drazen Kacar <dave@willfork.com>

       Home page: http://dave.willfork.com/slrnface/

				  28 Feb 2002			   slrnface(1)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=slrnface&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+15.0>

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