Text Terminal Screen Saver


News

This is a really old and dead project!
Last updated: 06/17/2001

The source code is now available online for download under the GPL. Code has been introduced to limit the program to one instance when running in anything other than window mode. This should fix the problem with many instances being run and eventually crashing/hanging.

What is this?

The Text Terminal screen saver provides a means to display text information in a way that mimics a text-mode terminal. This screen saver will fetch data from a set of local files or URLs and will then display the output character-by-character, line-by-line.

Your Text Terminal screen saver can be used to display those thousand-some-odd t-files you kept from the BBS days, simple ASCII art files, or interesting web information, such as that provided by the WebCrawler Search Voyeur. Add to the Text Terminal screen saver's functionality by writing your own php/cgi/asp/perl scripts and serv them up via the web! Write the great american novel and have it displayed proudly when you're AFK.

Features

The Text Terminal screen saver is jammed full of features...here you go:

Screens/Examples

Configuration screen:

config

Example screen (run in smaller windowed mode, showing results from the webcrawler search voyeur):

window

Windows display properties showing Text Terminal screen saver:

control panel

Download

The following files are available for download:

License

Copyright (C) 2000 Jason Plumb This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Installation/Uninstallation

Nothing to it! Once you have downloaded the main distribution archive, simply extract the "Text Terminal.scr" file to the your windows directory (usually c:\windows). The program is now installed.

To complete the installation, it is recommended that you enable the screen saver via the desktop control panel. Right click an empty spot on your desktop and choose "Properties". Click the "Screen Saver" tab at the top of the dialog and then choose "Text Terminal" in the drop down box that will be displayed below.

To uninstall the screen saver, simply delete the file from your windows directory. Additionally, the program will use/create a file named "termscr.ini" in the windows directory. This file may also be deleted for complete program uninstallation.

Configuration

Configuring the screen saver is nearly as simple as installing it! Click the "Settings" button in the screen saver display properties and you will be shown a dialog similar one above.

Here is a run-down of the configuration options:

After entering configuration options, you must click the OK button to confirm the changes. Pressing the Cancel button will abort the configuration changes.

Miscellaneous Notes

Here are a few other random thoughts about the program:


Feel free to comment on this software. All feedback/flames/suggestions can be sent to jason@noisybox.net