NAME

       phosphor - simulates an old terminal with long-sustain phosphor

SYNOPSIS

       phosphor  [-display  host:display.screen]  [-window]  [-root]  [-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.

       -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 address the screen directly.

       -program sh-command
               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 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 'cat /usr/src/linux*/README'
               phosphor -program 'ping localhost'
               phosphor -program 'ps -e'
               phosphor -program 'od -txC -w6 /dev/random'
               phosphor -program 'cat /dev/random'
               phosphor -scale 2 -geom =1280x1024 -program 'top'
               phosphor -scale 4 -geom =1280x1024 \
                        -program 'mtr www.kernel.org'
               phosphor -program 'xemacs -nw -q -f life'
               phosphor -scale 5 -geom =1280x1024 \
                        -program 'xemacs -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 tcsh

       -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 character 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.

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

SEE ALSO

       xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-text(1), fortune(1), apple2(6x), starwars(6x), fontglide(6x), ljlatest(6x),
       dadadodo(1), webcollage(6x), driftnet(1) EtherPEG, EtherPeek, console_codes(4).

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright  © 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.

AUTHOR

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

X Version 11                                   5.45 (08-Dec-2020)                                   phosphor(6x)