1Figlet is a term for a student who participates in a Freshman Interest Group (FIG) on their college campus.

2Figlet is a computer program that generates text banners, in a variety of fonts, comprised of letters made up of conglomerations of smaller ASCII characters (see ASCII Art). The terms computer program, software program, applications program, system software, or just program are used to refer to either an executable program by both lay people and computer programmers or the collection of source code from which an executable program is created (eg, compiled). ... In language, text is a broad term for something that contains words to express something. ... A banner is a flag or other piece of cloth bearing a symbol, logo, slogan or other message. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... Look up Letter on Wiktionary, the free dictionary A letter is a written message from one party to another. ... For other uses, see ASCII (disambiguation). ... ASCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from characters (preferably from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII). ...

History

According to the man page, figlet stands for "Frank, Ian and Glenn's LETters" after the creators, Glenn Chappell (who was the main programmer) and Ian Chai, and Frank, whose .sig (email signature) inspired the program. The fonts for the program were inspired by various UseNet articles and signatures. Almost all substantial UNIX and Unix-like operating systems have extensive documentation available as an electronic manual, split into multiple sections called man pages (short for manual pages and based on the command used to display them). ... John Hancocks signature is one of the most prominent on the United States Declaration of Independence. ... Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...

Behaviour

Figlet can read from standard input or accept a message as part of the command line. It prints to standard output. Some common arguments (options) are: The standard streams are a set of input and output channels featured in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, and provided by the standard I/O library (stdio. ... The standard streams are a set of input and output channels featured in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, and provided by the standard I/O library (stdio. ...

• -f to select a font file.
• -d to change the directory for fonts.
• -c centers the output.
• -l left-aligns the output.
• -r right-aligns the output.
• -t sets the output width to the terminal width.
• -w specifies a custom output width.
• -k enables kerning, printing each letter of the message individually, instead of merged into the adjacent letters.

A font can mean: A member of a typeface family; or digital font - file format that encapsulates a typeface family in a database. ... A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system. ... In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting letter spacing in a proportional font. ...

Sample Usage

An example of output generated by Figlet is shown below.

 __ ___ _ _ _ _ _   / (_) | _(_)_ __ ___ __| (_) /    / / /| | |/ / | '_  / _ / _` | | / _   V V / | | <| | |_) | __/ (_| | |/ ___  _/_/ |_|_|__| .__/ ___|__,_|_/_/ _ |_| 

The following code:

 figlet -ct -f roman ilzken 

generates this output:

 oooooo oooooo oooo o8o oooo o8o .o8 o8o `888. `888. .8' `"' `888 `"' "888 `"' `888. .8888. .8' oooo 888 oooo oooo oo.ooooo. .ooooo. .oooo888 oooo .oooo. `888 .8'`888. .8' `888 888 .8P' `888 888' `88b d88' `88b d88' `888 `888 `P )88b `888.8' `888.8' 888 888888. 888 888 888 888ooo888 888 888 888 .oP"888 `888' `888' 888 888 `88b. 888 888 888 888 .o 888 888 888 d8( 888 `8' `8' o888o o888o o888o o888o 888bod8P' `Y8bod8P' `Y8bod88P" o888o `Y888""8o 888 o888o 

The -ct options centers the text and makes it take up the full width of the terminal. The '-f roman' option specifies the 'roman' font file.

External links

• Figlet Homepage
• An online Figlet server
• Another online Figlet server