Figlet - the better banner

Figlet is small tool a bit similar to described earlier (http://tuxshell.blogspot.com/2009/08/banner.html) banner command. It allows to create pretty nice ASCII art letters out of ordinary text. You can download it from http://www.figlet.org.

Installation

$ wget ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/program/unix/figlet222.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf figlet222.tar.gz
$ cd filglet222

We can set the default installation directory as well as the default fonts directory by editing the Makefile. I had to comment the following line:

# DEFAULTFONTDIR = fonts

to avoid installation error. Let's build and install:

$ make
$ su -c 'make install'

Usage

When no arguments are present, the program waits for input . Type what you want and see the result. It will render the text given as the first argument:

$ figlet hello world

 _          _ _                            _     _
| |__   ___| | | ___   __      _____  _ __| | __| |
| '_ \ / _ \ | |/ _ \  \ \ /\ / / _ \| '__| |/ _` |
| | | |  __/ | | (_) |  \ V  V / (_) | |  | | (_| |
|_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/    \_/\_/ \___/|_|  |_|\__,_|

We can see all available fonts by listing *.flf files /usr/local/share/figlet/:

$ ls *.flf

banner.flf bubble.flf lean.flf script.flf small.flf smslant.flf
big.flf digital.flf mini.flf shadow.flf smscript.flf standard.flf
block.flf ivrit.flf mnemonic.flf slant.flf smshadow.flf term.flf

The -f switch selects the font:

$ figlet -f shadow shadow

|               |
__| __ \   _` |  _` |  _ \\ \  \   /
\__ \ | | | (   | (   | (   |\ \  \ /
____/_| |_|\__,_|\__,_|\___/  \_/\_/

We can also set text justification with -c , -l, -r and -x switches:

$ figlet -l left

_       __ _
| | ___ / _| |_
| |/ _ \ |_| __|
| |  __/  _| |_
|_|\___|_|  \__|

$ figlet -c center
            _
    ___ ___ _ __ | |_ ___ _ __
   / __/ _ \ '_ \| __/ _ \ '__|
  | (_|  __/ | | | ||  __/ |
   \___\___|_| |_|\__\___|_|

$ figlet -r right
                                      _       _     _
                                 _ __(_) __ _| |__ | |_
                                | '__| |/ _` | '_ \| __|
                                | |  | | (_| | | | | |_
                                |_|  |_|\__, |_| |_|\__|
                                        |___/

When sending to figlet the output from other file it's good to use -p switch. It switches the figlet into paragraph mode, which eliminates unnecessary line breaks when piping a multi-line file:

$ figlet -p < /etc/motd

The -k, -s and -S switches control the kerning of the letters. We can achieve the mirror effect by using the -R option which prints the text from right to left:

$ figlet -kR hello

                                                  _  _        _
                                            ___  | || |  ___ | |__
                                           / _ \ | || | / _ \| '_ \
                                          | (_) || || ||  __/| | | |
                                           \___/ |_||_| \___||_| |_|

Combining figlet with tr command ale proper fonts leads us to some more interesting effects:

$ figlet -f lean hello | tr ' _/' '/  '
/////////////////////////////////////////
////  //////////////////  //  ///////////
///      //////    ////  //  ////    ////
//  ////  //        //  //  //  ////  ///
/  ////  //  ////////  //  //  ////  ////
////  ////      //  //  ////    ///////
/////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////

Of course we can pipe output of any command to the figlet. The imagination is the limit.

$ date | figlet
_____                _                 _ _
|_   _|   _  ___     / \  _   _  __ _  / / |
| || | | |/ _ \   / _ \| | | |/ _` | | | |
| || |_| |  __/  / ___ \ |_| | (_| | | | |
|_| \__,_|\___| /_/   \_\__,_|\__, | |_|_|
                        |___/
___   ___    _________   _  ___     ____ _____ ____ _____
/ _ \ / _ \ _|___ / ___|_/ |/ _ \   / ___| ____/ ___|_   _|
| | | | (_) (_) |_ \___ (_) | | | | | |   |  _| \___ \ | |
| |_| |\__, |_ ___) |__) || | |_| | | |___| |___ ___) || |
\___/   /_/(_)____/____(_)_|\___/   \____|_____|____/ |_|

____   ___   ___   ___
|___ \ / _ \ / _ \ / _ \
__) | | | | | | | (_) |
/ __/| |_| | |_| |\__, |
|_____|\___/ \___/   /_/

We can run the full screen clock based on figlet:

$ watch -n1 "date +%H:%M:%S | figlet -k -c"