LINUXCNCLCD(1)

📦 version 2.9.4, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🎀 LINUXCNCLCD — bestie's guide to the little LCD screen era 🎀

okay so real talk, this is linuxcnclcd, and it lives in the The Enhanced Machine Controller manual, section 1. yes, that's the LinuxCNC man family, and yes, we're getting into the deep cuts today. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, we're doing this.

✨ NAME ✨

linuxcnclcd — the LinuxCNC Graphical User Interface for LCD character display 💅

like... a GUI. for a character display. the audacity. the vision. we love her.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

linuxcnclcd -ini <INI file>

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one flag, one file, go. 👑

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so linuxcnclcd is one of the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for LinuxCNC 🌈 and it gets run by the runscript usually — like, that's her natural habitat, the runscript just kind of launches her.

here's the thing though. she's designed to run on a 4 x 20 LCD character display. four characters by twenty. that's it. that's the canvas. the entire screen. 😭

and then the original doc hits us with this absolute line, no cap:

It is not clear if it has ever worked.

bestie. BESTIE. the man page itself doesn't know if the program works. that's not a bug report, that's a vibe. she's giving mystery, she's giving myth, she's giving "we found this in the attic and we're not touching it". iconic honestly. 💀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • INIFILE — okay so the ini file is literally the main piece of a LinuxCNC configuration 🫶 but WAIT, she's not the entire configuration, don't get it twisted. there's a whole friend group that comes with her: NML files, HAL files, TBL files, and VAR files. the ini file is still the queen of the group though, because she's the one holding the whole configuration together. she can adjust a lot of parameters all by herself, but she also tells LinuxCNC which other files to load and use. so like... she's the group chat admin. she runs the show. 🎀

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

  • LinuxCNC(1)
  • also, and this is a big one — there's much more information about LinuxCNC and HAL available in the LinuxCNC and HAL User Manuals, and they live at /usr/share/doc/LinuxCNC/. go read them, they're the actual lore. 📚

✨ BUGS ✨

None known at this time.

(not me being suspicious about that. 🙈 given the "it is not clear if it has ever worked" situation, we're just gonna take this at face value and move on. nothing to see here. everything's fine.)

✨ AUTHOR ✨

this man page was written by andypugh, as part of the LinuxCNC project. 🫶

✨ REPORTING BUGS ✨

found a bug? (or, hypothetically, found the concept of this program?) report bugs at:

https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/issues

go go go, they wanna hear from you 🔥

Copyright © 2020 andypugh.

this is free software; see the source for copying conditions. and listen closely because this part is serious:

There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

so like, she's free, but she is not making any promises. that's the deal. periodt. 💅

and that's the whole page, bestie 🌸 this one shipped as part of the LinuxCNC Documentation, dated 2020-08-26, and it's genuinely one of my favorites — a GUI for a 4x20 character LCD that nobody's sure ever ran. main character energy fr fr. go build something. 🦋✨💖

📦 where this page comes from