SHANTY(1)

📦 version 3, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 SHANTY(1) — the Shanty manual, bestie edition 💖

okay so you found the SHANTY page in section 1 of the manual and you're like "what is this" — don't worry, I got you. Shanty is a lil tool that turns an image plus some text into a PostScript file, and it's lowkey iconic. Let's get into it. 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

Shanty — Makes a PostScript file from an image and some text. that's it, that's the vibe. 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

shanty -i image_file [-t text_file] [-o output_file] [-s paper_size] [-d
density] [-m margin] [-b background_color] [-x padding] [-n title] [-l
orientation] [-rtl] [-btt] [-f font_name] [-altgd]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So here's the whole deal, bestie: Shanty takes a text file and an image (PNG or JPG, we love both) and creates a PostScript file where one pixel in the image becomes one character in the PostScript. yes fr fr, one pixel → one character. it's giving pixel art but make it typography. 😭🔥

👑 OPTIONS 👑

  • -i, -image — Name of the image to load in. JPG and PNG images are supported. This is the only compulsory field, so like… you literally cannot skip it. it's the main character. 👑
  • -t, -text — Name of the text file to load in, if omitted STDIN is used. so if you don't hand it a file it'll just slurp from stdin, no biggie. 🍓
  • -o, -output — Name of the PostScript file to produce, if omitted STDOUT is used. yeah so no filename = it just yells the whole thing out to stdout. ✨
  • -s, -size — Size of the paper to work with. This field should be one of: "a0", "a2", "a3", "a4", "a5", "a6", "letter", "broadsheet", "ledger", "tabloid", "legal", "executive" and "36x36". Default is "a4". (yes bestie, a1 is not in the list. I don't make the rules, I just report them. 💀)
  • -d, -density — Density of the text. Higher numbers are more dense, default is 1.4. more number = more dense, that's the whole thing. 🧚
  • -m, -margin — The margins of the page in cm. Default is 1. centimetres, bestie, not inches. keep up. 💜
  • -b, -background — The colour of a backing rectangle to place behind the text. Colours are specified as "R,G,B" with each value between 0 and 255. "off" means no backing colour. Default is "off". so like a little rectangle glow-up behind your text, or nothing at all. 🌈
  • -x, -p, -padding — Density of the text. Higher numbers are more dense, default is 1.4. (yes it says the same thing as -density, that's literally what's written, I'm not gonna gaslight you about it 🙈)
  • -n, -title — The title of the output to write as meta-data in the PostScript file. Default is "Shanty output". it's just metadata, but it's your metadata. 🎀
  • -l, -orientation — The orientation of the paper, can be "portrait", "landscape" or "auto". Default is "auto". let it decide, she's got this. 🌸
  • -rtl — Switch to right-to-left text. for the rtl girlies. 🫶
  • -btt — Switch to bottom-to-top text. text but it's climbing the page. 😭
  • -f, -font — Specify font. The font name specified must be visible to the not just make a font magically appear. Default is "Courier-Bold". so like, the font you name has to actually be there — you can't just speak a font into existence, bestie, that's not how it works. 💅
  • -altgd — If you have problems loading the GD library, try this switch. it's the "have you tried turning it off and on again" of switches. 🔥

🏠 HOMEPAGE 🏠

<http://www.codebunny.org/coding/shanty/>

✍️ AUTHOR ✍️

Duncan Martin <duncan@codebunny.org>

💐 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 💐

Many thanks to DFB <http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~dfb/> and contributors to comp.lang.postscript.

okay that's the whole page, you ate that, go make some pixel-text PostScript art 💖✨

and a lil sign-off for the girlies who read to the end: this is Shanty, page SHANTY(1), dated 6 October 2006, written by Duncan Martin. mwah. 🎀👑

📦 where this page comes from