NAME

bs-renderflipdot —

Render for and send text to a flipdot display

SYNOPSIS

bs-renderflipdot [-n] [-i] [-s size] -f font [-f font [-f ...]] [-S] [-P] [-W width] [-H height] [-h host] [-p port] [-4] [-6] text

DESCRIPTION

bs-renderflipdot uses buchstabensuppe(3) to render a given string onto a binary bitmap. It additionally has the ability to send the resulting bitmap to a flipdot display via its common UDP protocol which can be disabled using the -n option.

The full list of options is as follows:

-n: Dry run. Disables sending the rendered bitmap to a flipdot display via UDP which is useful if you just want to render a string to stdout.
-i: Render inverted. By default the resulting bitmap is rendered white on black, by passing -i it is inverted to be black on white. -s size Specify the font size in pixels. When this option is given it affects all fonts that are added after the -s option. If it is missing, the default size of 16 is used. Can be used multiple times.
-f path: Add a font file. The added fonts are used as fallback fonts in the order they are given on the command line, meaning the first given font will be checked first for glyphs. If the font file contains multiple fonts, the one with index 0 is always used. Must be specified at least once.
-S: Scroll the text through the screen instead of cutting it off at the edge of the screen if it overflows. The scrolling motion is rendered at 8 FPS so a real flipdot can keep up, which means that bs-renderflipdot takes roughly (screen_width * 2 + bitmap_width) * (1s / 8) to finish.
-P: Page the text instead of cutting it off at the edge of the screen. This means the rendered bitmap would be cut up into pieces of screen_width. Each of these pieces is shown for 2s which means bs-renderflipdot takes roughly floor(bitmap_width / screen_width) * 2s to finish.
-W width: Width of the target flipdot display. Only relevant if -n is not given, defaults to 80.
-H height: Height of the target flipdot display. Only relevant if -n is not given, defaults to 16.
-h host: Host of the target flipdot display. Only relevant if -n is not given, localhost is the default value.
-p port: Port of the target flipdot display. Only relevant if -n is not given, 2323 is the default value.
-4: Use IPv4 address of target host if any. Otherwise the one returned first by getaddrinfo(3) is used.
-6: Use IPv6 address of target host if any.
-?: Show usage information.

EXIT STATUS

bs-renderflipdot exits with 0 on success and with 1 if an error of any kind occurs.

EXAMPLES

Render “Hello World” using GNU Unifont in size 16 to stdout without sending it anywhere:

bs-renderflipdot -s 16 -f /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont.ttf \
  -n "Hello World"

Render “Hi 👋” black on white onto a flipdot display running on flipdot.lab:2323 using GNU Unifont and its upper codepages variant Unifont Upper:

bs-renderflipdot -i -s 16 \
  -f /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont.ttf \
  -f /usr/share/fonts/truetype/unifont_upper.ttf \
  -h flipdot.lab "Hi 👋"

AUTHORS