
Never Miss Another Reminder #26
Chapter 4, Related to X
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85
HACK
The Way You Like It
You can add several customization switches to tune how the osd_cat com-
mand presents text on the screen. The first thing you want to do is increase
the text size. Use the
–f switch followed by a font definition to make osd_cat
use the font you prefer.
Font definitions, such as the ones used by osd_cat, can appear intimidating
because they contain so much information littered with dashes and aster-
isks. Each part of the definition says something about the type of font, the
point size, whether the font is bold, etc. It’s probably safe to stick with the
definitions listed here, but if you want to play with various font definitions,
run the program xfontsel. This program lets you play with the various
parameters that make up a font definition while showing the results in the
window. When you come up with a combination you like, you can click the
Select button, which will copy the full definition onto the clipboard and let
you paste it into your script or program.
If you want a big eye-catching font, you’ll probably want to use the follow-
ing font definition, which is available in almost every Linux distribution:
-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-240-*-*-p-*-*-*
If you have the Microsoft TrueType fonts installed [Hack #25], you can get a
much broader range of font sizes at the cost of speed. The larger you make
the font, ...