slrnface - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

slrnface - show X-Faces in X11 terminal emulator

SYNOPSIS

slrnface [ -xOffsetChar x_char_offset ] [ -yOffsetChar y_char_offset ] [ -xOffsetPix
x_pixel_offset ] [ -yOffsetPix y_pixel_offset ] [ -XFacePad left_padding ] [ -ink fg_color
] [ -paper bg_color ] [ -padColor pad_color ]

DESCRIPTION

The slrnface helper utility can be used from slrn(1), mutt(1) or similar programs to show
X-Faces in Usenet articles or mail messages when those programs are run in an X11 terminal
emulator. This utility is not intended to be run directly from the command line. Instead,
the master programs should be configured to invoke slrnface when appropriate.

Different terminal emulators have different screen layouts. Some might have scroolbars (on
either side), a menubar or something else. Terminal window which slrnface uses might
contain some of these "decorations," but it is impossible to determine if that is the case
at run time. Therefore it is impossible to determine the exact location at which the X11
window with the X-Face image should be placed. Default hardcoded values are appropriate
for several terminal emulators, but not for all of them. The placement can be controlled
by command line arguments, but it is suggested to use X resources for this task.

While slrnface is running and showing X-Face, the left mouse button can be used to move
the window.

RESOURCES

The slrnface helper is controlled by the resources set for the terminal emulator in which
it runs, not for the slrnface class or instance. That is because correct execution
entirely depends on the master program and the geometry of the terminal emulator in use
and has little to do with slrnface itself. All resources have a command line parameter
equivalent.

However, a lot of popular terminal emulators have a certain amount of hardcoded brain
damage and setting X resources will not have any effect with them. This usually happens
because of illegal characters in the WM_CLASS property. In those cases command line
arguments are the only remaining option.

Resource Command line parameter Default value
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
slrnface.xOffsetChar -xOffsetChar 0
slrnface.yOffsetChar -yOffsetChar 1
slrnface.xOffsetPix -xOffsetPix 0
slrnface.yOffsetPix -yOffsetPix 2
slrnface.XFacePad -XFacePad 0
slrnface.ink -ink black
slrnface.paper -paper white
slrnface.padColor -padColor black

xOffsetChar
The horizontal offset for the X-Face window from the terminal's upper right corner
expressed in character units.

yOffsetChar
The vertical offset for the X-Face window from the terminal's upper right corner expressed
in character units. The exact value in pixels will be calculated at run time, as well as
the pixel equivalent for xOffestChar. There are some lousily coded terminals which are
not very helpful with this, so the calculation might not be perfect.

xOffsetPix
The horizontal offset for the X-Face window from the terminal's upper right corner
expressed in pixels.

yOffsetPix
The vertical offset for the X-Face window from the terminal's upper right corner expressed
in pixels. This value is added to the character offset provided by the yOffsetChar
resource and the resulting sum is substracted from the vertical coordinate of the
terminal's upper right corner. The equivalent calculation for the horizontal coordinate is
done with the xOffsetChar and xOffsetPix resources. In both cases, pixel value resources
are provided for finer control.

XFacePad
This value tells slrnface how many pixels should be cleared on the left side of the X-Face
image. In the case of long subject lines the image may be displayed over characters and
having some spacing between them would be beneficial.

ink
This is the foreground color for the X-Face image. The more common name for this resource
is foreground. However, that name is not used because there is a high probability that it
would be inherited from the terminal's resources. A lot of users use light foreground and
dark background for terminals. Since X-Faces should normally be viewed with dark
foreground on light background, inheriting the colors from the terminal setup would
present a negative image by default. In order to avoid that, slrnface uses different
resource name.

paper
This is the background color for the X-Face image.

padColor
This is the color for the padding region set with XFacePad resource.

EXAMPLES

The following example demonstrates how to set resources for xterm.

Example 1: horizontal offsets for xterm
Since slrnface looks at the resources defined for the terminal's class and name, an
example setting is:

xterm.slrnface.xOffsetChar: 1
xterm.slrnface.xOffsetPix: 2

It is better to use the application name, rather than class, because some other terminals
use XTerm as their class, since they try to be feature compatible. However, they might not
have the same screen layout, so resources set for the terminal class might not yield the
desired effect in all terminals.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

DISPLAY The name of the display where the terminal runs. This environment variable
is the only way to pass it to slrnface.

WINDOWID Used for determining terminal's X window id. It must be set by a terminal
emulator.

LANG, LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES
These environment variables will be used when determining the location of
the appropriate resource file.

EXIT STATUS

The slrnface helper doesn't print any diagnostic, because it doesn't know if that is the
appropriate action. In cases when diagnostic output is appropriate, it can't guarantee
that the output would be visible to the user. Therefore it returns distinct error status
for every kind of problem and relies on the parent process to take the appropriate action.

It should be noted that slrnface forks early in its execution. The parent process exits
immediately, returning success status to its parent. The child process continues
execution, reading commands from the FIFO in the $HOME/.slrnfaces directory and executing
them as appropriate. In the case where there is a problem with the process' startup, the
fork doesn't happen and slrnface exits immediately, returning the appropriate error
status. The following exit values are returned:

0 Successful completion.

1 slrnface couldn't connect to the display.

2 Terminal emulator didn't set the WINDOWID environment variable or its value was
invalid.

3 slrnface couldn't find its controlling terminal.

4 Terminal's width or height are not set.

5 There was a problem with the FIFO setup.

6 fork(2) failed.

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