xscreensaver-text(6x)

📦
version 6.17 · 7 versions
, in fedora 44

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to xscreensaver-text — the XScreenSaver manual babe 💖 — this little cutie literally prints some text to stdout, for use by screen savers. that's it. that's the job. 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

xscreensaver-text [--verbose] [--columns N] [--lines N] [--latin1]
[--date] [--text STRING] [--file PATH] [--program CMD] [--url URL]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the xscreensaver-text script spits out some text for use by various screensavers, and it decides what text based on the options you set in the ~/.xscreensaver file. lowkey iconic behavior honestly.

what does it dump? could be:

  • the contents of a file 📄
  • the output of a program 🖥️
  • a URL it loads 🌐

and then — plot twist — the text gets reformatted and wrapped as appropriate. slay. ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

xscreensaver-text accepts the following options, bestie, and yes we're going through all of them:

  • --verbose or --v — print diagnostics to stderr. and the more -v switches you stack, the more output you get. go off, chatterbox 💬
  • --columns N or --cols N — where to wrap lines; default is 72 columns.
  • --lines N — truncate output to at most this many lines. default: unlimited. (no cap 🧢 — literally, no cap)
  • --latin1 — convert any UTF-8 characters in the input to their closest Latin1 equivalent for output.

command line options may be used to override the settings in the ~/.xscreensaver file 👑

  • --date — print the host name and current time. ⏰
  • --text STRING — print out the given text. it may contain % escape sequences as per strftime(2).
  • --file PATH — print the contents of the given file, re-formatting it as per the other options.
  • --program CMD — run the given program and print its output, re-formatting it as per the other options.
  • --url URL — download and print the contents of the web page. if it contains HTML, RSS, or Atom, it will be converted to plain-text. and heads up: this re-downloads the document every time it is run. every. single. time. 😭

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, http_proxy, or https_proxy — to get the default proxy host and port. (yes, both cases, she's bilingual 💅)

💀 BUGS 💀

URLs should be cached, use "If-Modified-Since", and obey "Expires".

like come on, it's giving 2005. 🫠

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

xscreensaver-settings(1), xscreensaver(1), fortune(1), phosphor(6x), apple2(6x), starwars(6x), fontglide(6x), dadadodo(1), webcollage(6x)

the whole friend group fr fr 🫶

Copyright © 2005-2021 by Jamie Zawinski.

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.

No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 20-Mar-2005.

and that's the whole page babes 🧚 this was xscreensaver-text from the XScreenSaver manual, X Version 11, 6.17-1.fc44 dated 13-Oct-2026 — stay wrapped, stay verbose, and remember: unlimited lines is a lifestyle, periodt. 💖✨🍓

📦 where this page comes from