ASCII Art, Animation, and Utilities
asciiville - Launch a terminal emulator and specified character based command, ascii art, asciimatics animation, character based Email/FTP/File/Web clients, and character based utilities
asciiville [-a] [-A] [-b] [-c command] [-C] [-d] [-D delay] [-E len] [-f] [-F] [-g] [-i] [-I] [-jJ] [-kK] [-l] [-L level] [-m] [-M] [-N] [-n num] [-p] [-P script] [-r] [-R] [-s song] [-S] [-t] [-T] [-U] [-v] [-V show] [-w] [-W] [-x] [-X] [-y] [-Y] [-z] [-Z] [-u] [file1 [file2 …]]
Invoked without any arguments or with the -i argument, asciiville displays an interactive dialog menu.
The asciiville command acts as a front-end for launching character based utilities and ascii art in various terminal emulators. Asciiville can be used to launch any specified character based command. Command line options also support running the asciiville window in a tmux session and recording that session using asciinema.
The asciiville command can be used to display Ascii Art either as a slideshow or interactively. For example:
# Slideshow of Ascii Art in /usr/share/asciiville/art/Art/
asciiville -V Art
# Slideshow of Ascii Art in /usr/share/asciiville/art/Vintage/
asciiville -V Vintage
# Interactive display of Ascii Art in .../file1 and .../file2
asciiville file1 file2 ...
# Slideshow of Ascii Art in file1, file2, and file3
asciiville -V files file1 file2 file3
# Slideshow of Ascii Art files listed in /tmp/asciiart.txt
asciiville -V files=/tmp/asciiart.txt
Filenames provided to asciiville, either on the command line or in
a specified file, can be absolute paths to files; relative paths to files;
or relative paths to files in the Asciiville Ascii Art galleries folder.
Ascii Art filenames may be provided with or without the filename suffix
(e.g. Friends/tux.asc or Friends/tux.asc.gz or Friends/tux`).
When provided filename(s) as argument(s) asciiville treats the files as ascii art and displays each file. In slideshow mode the display is paused for a configurable number of seconds between ascii art files. In interactive mode the display waits for the user to type ‘Enter’ before displaying the next file. In this mode, if the user types ‘z’ or ‘b’ followed by ‘Enter’ then asciiville enters “zoom/browse” mode. In zoom/browse mode the user can zoom in and out of the ascii art. Use the following key presses to navigate in zoom/browse mode:
In addition, in interactive mode the user can enter ‘s’ or ‘S’ followed by ‘Return’ to enter into “slideshow” mode. In slideshow mode the ascii art is displayed for a few seconds then the next file is displayed. No user interaction is possible during slideshow mode other than ‘Ctrl-c’ to exit.
The asciiville command can also act as a front-end to the asciisplash and asciisplash-tmux commands when invoked with the -S and -T command line options.
When invoked with the -i option, asciiville presents a selection menu and operates in interactive mode. Included in the wide variety of options available in the Asciiville interactive menus are selections to display the MusicPlayerPlus and RoonCommandLine interactive menus.
The interactive menu interface provides three types of menu options. Some menu selections trigger the execution of a command. Other menu selections are used to set the command that would be run when a terminal emulator is selected. Finally, some menu selections can be used to toggle preferences like Fullscreen, Use Tmux, and Record Tmux Session. Once a command and terminal type have been selected and desired options are set then the command can be executed by selecting the menu entry *Run
Previously started tmux sessions and asciimatics scripts can be quickly and easily terminated by executing the asciiville -K command.
Asciiville preferences are maintained in $HOME/.config/asciiville/config. Preferences set in interactive menu mode are preserved over invocations of asciiville. For example, if a command and terminal were selected in interactive menu mode then those selections will automatically be applied the next time asciiville is run.
The asciiville command initializes some configuration settings by reading the file $HOME/.config/asciiville/config. These are user configurable and saved each time the asciiville command exits. A sample Asciiville configuration file is provided below. In this sample configuration the ARTDIR is set to /usr/share/asciiville/art, the default Asciiville Ascii Art galleries folder. To change the Ascii Art galleries folder, modify this setting. For example, to change where asciiville looks for Ascii Art galleries, this setting could be modified to:
ARTDIR=${HOME}/Pictures/AsciiArt
Asciiville commands would then look in $HOME/Pictures/AsciiArt for Ascii Art galleries rather than /usr/share/asciiville/art.
Of particular interest are the art_font_size and txt_font_size configuration settings. These control the size of the font used to display Ascii Art slideshows and the Figlet text in slideshows. Individual display devices differ in resolution. Terminal emulator windows used for display of Ascii Art vary in number of rows and columns available. The Ascii Art included with Asciiville was generated in fairly high resolution. Reducing the art_font_size will decrease the amount of screen the art display requires while increasing that font size will increase the size of the art displayed. Similarly, decreasing or increasing the txt_font_size will shrink or enlargen the Figlet text displayed. The default settings for these two configuration parameters are ‘4’ and ‘20’. If the art displayed during a slideshow is too small or you wish to make it larger, change art_font_size=4 to art_font_size=6 and txt_font_size=20 to txt_font_size=24. Some experimentation may be required to fit the art to your display and terminal emulator window.
A sample Asciiville configuration file $HOME/.config/asciiville/config:
ARTDIR=/usr/share/asciiville/art
MUSEDIR=/usr/share/asciiville/music
SONG=/home/ronnie/Music/Buckingham_Green.mp3
ALTSONG=/Epic_Dramatic-Yuriy_Bespalov.wav
AUDIO=1
BROWSER=w3m
COMMAND=newsboat
FULLSCREEN=
LOLCAT="lolcat"
MTITLE="RSS Feeds"
CURRENT=
GNOME=1
RETRO=
TILIX=
XFCE4=
use_lolcat=1
use_lol=YES
journal="asciiville"
style="fancy"
art_font_size=6
txt_font_size=24
defchars=' ...,;:clodxkO0KXNWM'
revchars='MWNXK0Okxdolc:;,... '
revlong='WMZO0QLCJUYXzcvun1il;:,^.. '
longchars=' ..^,:;li1nuvczXYUJCLQ0OZMW'
In interactive menu mode, asciiville may prompt for the selection of ascii art file(s) and folders. The asciiville command utilizes the ranger file manager command for file and folder selection.
Choosing a directory in Ranger is done by visiting a directory. Use the arrow keys to browse folders. Press ‘Enter’ to enter a directory. Create a new directory with :mkdir <dirname>. While in the directory you wish to select, quit Ranger with ‘q’.
Choosing a file in Ranger is done by visiting a directory and selecting a file. Use the arrow keys to browse folders. Press ‘Enter’ or ‘Right Arrow’ to enter a directory and ‘Left Arrow’ to go back up a directory. While in a directory, use the arrow keys to navigate to the file you wish to select. To select a single file, press ‘Enter’ when the file is highlighted. To select multiple files, press ‘Space’ and navigate to another file. All files selected with ‘Space’ will be added to your selections when you press ‘Enter’ on a selected file to complete the selection process.
Terminal/Command options:
newsboat RSS feed reader, perform a web search, perform a speed test, run the got text based translation tool, or display a weather report.Slideshow / ASCIImatics animation options:
mpcplus music player client‘show’ can be one of ‘Art’, ‘Doctorwhen’, ‘Dragonflies’, ‘Fractals’, ‘Friends’, ‘Iterated’, ‘Lyapunov’, ‘Nature’, ‘Owls’, ‘Space’, ‘Vintage’, ‘Wallpapers’, ‘Waterfalls’, the name of a custom ascii art folder, the slideshow keyword ‘files’ which indicates display a slideshow using the ascii art files provided on the command line, or the slideshow argument ‘files=/path/to/file’ which indicates read the list of slideshow files from the file ‘/path/to/file’
General options:
Remaining arguments are filenames of ascii art to display
Ascii art filenames can be relative to the Ascii Art Gallery folder and need not specify the filename suffix. For example:
asciiville -L 2 Friends/tux Doctorwhen/Capitola_Village_Vivid
Invoked without any arguments, asciiville will display an interactive menu
asciiville in interactive mode with menu selections controlling actions rather than command line arguments, Btop System Monitor is the default command$HOME/.config/asciiville/configasciiville in interactive mode with Ranger File Manager selected as command rather than Btop System Monitorranger file manager running in cool-retro-term terminal emulatormpcplus music player running in Tilix terminal emulatorendoh1mapsciiwttr.innewsboat text based RSS feed reader in the current terminaltuir text based Reddit UI in the current terminalddgr command line web search in the current terminal windowgot command line translation tool in the current terminal windowwttr.incmus music player client running in a gnome-terminal emulator windowneomutt mail client in fullscreen mode running in a tilix terminal emulator windowlynx web browser running in a tmux session in an xfce4-terminal windowbtop system monitor running in a tmux sessionasciisplash displaying the Julia Set asciimatics animation with audioWritten by Ronald Record github@ronrecord.com
ASCIIVILLE is distributed under an Open Source license. See the file LICENSE in the ASCIIVILLE source distribution for information on terms & conditions for accessing and otherwise using ASCIIVILLE and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.
Submit bug reports online at:
https://github.com/doctorfree/Asciiville/issues
asciiart(1), asciijulia(1), asciimpplus(1), asciinema(1), asciiplasma(1), asciisplash(1), asciisplash-tmux(1), btop(1), cbftp(1), ddgr(1), jp2a(1), lynx(1), mutt(1), ranger(1), show_moon(1), show_weather(1)
Full documentation and sources at:
https://github.com/doctorfree/Asciiville