SM(1)

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version 0.29 · 5 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, debian trixie, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💅 SM(1) — General Commands Manual 🎀

okay bestie, so the manual name here is literally SM (section 1, General Commands Manual) and like… it's about sm. iconic. let's get into it ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

sm — displays a short text fullscreen. that's it. that's the whole vibe. big text, whole screen, slay.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sm [ OPTIONS ] [ text | - ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so Screen Message will display a given multi-line message as large as possible, fullscreen, and black on white. as large as possible, bestie — it's giving main character energy 💅 you can specify the text either when launching sm, or edit it while the program is running. your choice, no pressure.

After a short timeout, the text entry and the quit button will disappear, leaving nothing on the screen but the entered text. so clean. so minimalist. so aesthetic. To continue entering text, just start typing or (left-)click anywhere on the screen — it'll wake right back up 🫶

  • To clear the displayed text, press Escape.
  • To invert the colors of the text and the background, press Ctrl+I.
  • To quit the program, press Ctrl+Q, or Escape twice, or click the "Quit"-button.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • [ text | - ] — the text to display at start up. defaults to ":-)" (yes really, a little emoticon, adorable). if "-" is passed to sm, it will read the text to display from the standard input, see the REMOTE CONTROLLING SM section below 👀
  • -f, --foreground=colordesc — define a different color to use for the foreground of the text to display than black. the text string can be in any of the forms accepted by XParseColor; these include name for a color from rgb.txt, such as DarkSlateGray, or a hex specification such as #3050b2 or #35b. so many options, we love options 💖
  • -b, --background=colordesc — define a different color to use for the background of the text to display than white. for possible values, see above (yes, same deal, XParseColor forms, hex, all that).
  • -i, --invert — switch the roles for foreground and background colors. useful if you prefer white-on-black. dark mode besties rise 🙈
  • -n, --font=fontspec — define a different font to use than the default sans-serif font of your system. the fontspec be the complete name for a truetype font (like "DejaVu Sans" or "Bitstream Vera Serif") or just a short font family specification ("serif", "sans-serif"). pick your fighter 🧚
  • -r, --rotate=rotation — rotates the display by rotation*90 degrees counter-clock-wise. so -r 1 rotates the display to the left, and -r 2 puts it upside down. chaos mode: activated 💀
  • -a, --align=alignment — aligns the text centered (-a 0), left (-a 1) or right (-a 2). choose your alignment era ⭐
  • -- — (double dash) end option parsing. this is used to be able to actually hand over text that starts of with an dash. lowkey essential ngl 🫶
  • -h, --help — this option will give you a short usage message summarizing the recognized options and quits. help a girl out ✨
  • -V, --version — this prints the project name together with its version number quits. (yes, that's the original wording, the "and" is missing, i said what i said 💀)

🌈 REMOTE CONTROLLING SM 🌈

If sm is called with - as a command line argument, it will read the text to be shown from the standard input. It will read the input until it reaches the end of the file, or the form feed character \f, and show the input read so far at once. Newline characters at the beginning or the end are ignored. The input is assumed to be UTF-8 encoded (see utf8(7)). iykyk 🧚

This can be used to create automatic displays of changing data or similar tricks. For example, the following command will create a simple digital watch:

(while sleep 1; do date +%T; printf \\f; done) | sm -

like?? a whole digital watch?? we're literally engineers now 👑

👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manual page was written by Joachim Breitner <mail@joachim-breitner.de> and updated by Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at> to reflect additions for commandline option handling. legends, both of them 🫶

that's the whole page bestie — no notes, no cap, periodt. 💅

signing off — this was the SM(1) page, dated November 24, 2012, from the General Commands Manual. catch you in the next readme, mwah 💖

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