bannerd.1

\"                                      Hey, EMACS: -*- nroff -*-
.TH BANNERD 1 "August 2012"
.SH NAME
bannerd \- A framebuffer animation daemon
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B bannerd
[\fIoptions\fR] [\fIinterval\fR] \fIframe.bmp\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
\fBbannerd\fP is a simple program that reads several bitmap files, forks into
background and renders them to framebuffer with the configured interval. It allows to show
frames in a slideshow or (faster) animation with a preconfigured time interval between
them one, several times or indefinitely in "automatic" mode, or to play, pause and skip
the frames "interactively" through a named pipe. It is mainly intended to be used in
embedded Linux systems to display e.g. boot animation.
.PP
The optional \fBinterval\fP between frames can be given in milliseconds or in
frames-per-second with the 'fps' suffix, and defaults to 41 (24fps).
.SH OPTIONS
\fBbannerd\fP follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long
options starting with two dashes (`-') and short variants of each of them.
.TP
.B \-c[num], \-\-run\-count[=num]
Display the sequence of frames \fBnum\fP times, then exit. If \fBnum\fP is omitted,
repeat only once. If it is less than 1, ignore the option.
.TP
.B \-D, \-\-no\-daemon
Do not fork into background, log to stdout.
.TP
.B \-i<fifo>, \-\-command\-pipe=<fifo>
Open a named pipe \fB<fifo>\fP and wait for commands. The pipe should exist.
If \fB\-c\fP is specified, it is ignored. See PLAYBACK COMMANDS for command
syntax.
.TP
.B \-p, \-\-preserve\-mode
Do not restore framebuffer mode on exit which usually means leaving last
frame displayed.
.TP
.B \-v, \-\-verbose
Do not suppress debug messages in the log (may also be suppressed by syslog
configuration).
.PP
If no options or parameters are given, a brief usage message is written to
stdout (and an error message to stderr) and the tool exits with exit code 1.
.SH PLAYBACK COMMANDS
With \fB\-i\fP option it is possible to externally control an instance of
\fBbannerd\fP through a named pipe. The program reads a sequence of commands
from the pipe until it is told to exit. Each command is separated from others
by a newline or ';' character. Commands can have optional parameters and are
not case-sensitive.
.SS exit
Tells \fBbannerd\fP to exit, optionally preserving the set mode (leaving the
last displayed frame) if \fB\-p\fP option was given on the command line.
.SS run [factor]
Play the animation indefinitely or \fBfactor\fP of times and then pause.
\fBfactor\fP can be given as an integer or floating-point number, a percentage
or a last frame number to be displayed.
.PP
Integer or float: \fBint\fP or \fB[int].fraction\fP. The animation is played
given times. E.g. if the number is 2.6, the whole animation is played 2 times,
from the point it was last paused, and then 0.6 (or 60%) of the total frames in
the animation are played.
.PP
Percent: \fBint%\fP. The given percentage of the animation is played. E.g. if
the parameter is 260% then the whole animation is played 2 times, from the point
it was last paused, and then 0.6 (or 60%) of the total frames in the animation
are played.
.PP
Frame number to pause: \fBintf\fP. The animation is displayed until the frame
with the given number, after which it is paused. E.g. if the parameter is 3f
then the animation is played until frame number 3. The first frame has number 0.
The number is silently divided modulo frame count in case it is bigger. If the
animation is paused on a frame with the bigger number, and then it is requested
to play until frame with smaller number, then it is played until the end and
started again until the given frame is displayed.
.SS skip factor
Skip a given part of the animation. \fBfactor\fP can be given as an integer or
floating-point number, a percentage or a last frame number to be skipped. See
\fBrun\fP for the description of those.
.SH BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
The program supports only BMP format, of which monochrome, 2bpp, 4bpp and 8bpp
images are not supported. Bitmaps must be either uncompressed (most common format) or
use bitmasks.
.PP
All the bitmap data is kept in memory in 32bpp mode. This means considerable
amount of memory consumed by the process for large animations: for a 800 x 480
32bpp bitmap 1500kB of memory are needed.
.PP
Alpha blending of images is not supported.
.PP
On big-endian systems, bitmap data are not parsed correctly.
.PP
\fBrun\fP command without a parameter cannot be interrupted.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR plymouth (8)
.br
.SH AUTHOR
bannerd was written by Alexander Lukichev <alexander.lukichev@gmail.com>.
It can be downloaded from GitHub: https://github.com/alukichev/bannerd.git.