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Application Guide

When used as a system application, TerminalTextEffects will produce animations on text passed to stdin or through the -i argument. Passing data via STDIN to TTE occurs via pipes or redirection.

Invocation Examples

Piping directory listing output through TTE
ls -latr | tte slide
Redirecting a file through TTE
tte slide < your_file
Passing a file argument to TTE
tte -i path/to/file slide

Configuration

TTE has many global terminal configuration options as well as effect-specific configuration options available via command-line arguments.

Terminal configuration options should be specified prior to providing the effect name. The basic format is as follows:

TTE usage syntax
tte [global_options] <effect_name> [effect_options]

Using the -h argument in place of the global_options or effect_options will produce either the global or effect help output, respectively.

The example below will pass the output of the ls command to TTE with the following options:

  • Global options:

    • Text will be wrapped if wider than the terminal.
    • Tabs will be replaced with 4 spaces.

  • Effect options:

    • Use the slide effect.
    • Merge the groups.
    • Set movement-speed to 2.
    • Group by column.
TTE argument specification example
ls | tte --wrap-text --tab-width 4 slide --merge --movement-speed 2 --grouping column

Example Usage

Animate fetch output on shell launch using screenfetch:

Shell Fetch
screenfetch -N | tte slide --merge

fetch_demo

Note

Fetch applications which utilize terminal sequences for color/formatting will not work with TTE. Check if your fetch application has a raw output switch.