YJL

Everyone knows FIGlet or at least have seen once or twice the output of FIGlet even whether they know what generates those or not. But not everyone knows that there is a port¹ of FIGlet, I was one of them until I came across a program called termdown, which is a countdown timer and depends on the port of FIGlet, pyfiglet:

                        _|_|  _|            _|              _|
_|_|_|    _|    _|    _|            _|_|_|  _|    _|_|    _|_|_|_|
_|    _|  _|    _|  _|_|_|_|  _|  _|    _|  _|  _|_|_|_|    _|
_|    _|  _|    _|    _|      _|  _|    _|  _|  _|          _|
_|_|_|      _|_|_|    _|      _|    _|_|_|  _|    _|_|_|      _|_|
_|              _|                      _|
_|          _|_|                    _|_|

Let’s compare the CLIs, FIGlet v2.2.2 (2005-08-05) and pyfiglet v0.7 (2014-06-08):

$ figlet -h
figlet: invalid option -- 'h'
Usage: figlet [ -cklnoprstvxDELNRSWX ] [ -d fontdirectory ]
              [ -f fontfile ] [ -m smushmode ] [ -w outputwidth ]
              [ -C controlfile ] [ -I infocode ] [ message ]

$ pyfiglet -h
Usage: pyfiglet [options] [text..]

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -f FONT, --font=FONT  font to render with (default: standard)
  -D DIRECTION, --direction=DIRECTION
                        set direction text will be formatted in (default:
                        auto)
  -j SIDE, --justify=SIDE
                        set justification, defaults to print direction
  -w COLS, --width=COLS
                        set terminal width for wrapping/justification
                        (default: 80)
  -r, --reverse         shows mirror image of output text
  -F, --flip            flips rendered output text over
  -l, --list_fonts      show installed fonts list
  -i, --info_font       show font's information, use with -f FONT

Well, I can’t say it’s fully ported in terms of options, but I would say they are close, the CLI isn’t the point here, but the programmical interface is, that you can just get a FIGlet-style output right in your Python script. I always shake my head whenever I see someone coding something like the following:

os.system('clear')
os.system('tput cup 0 0')

Why do I dislike code above? Just think about should you do in that way, you would understand why usually think this isn’t a good idea.

With pyfiglet, you don’t need to pipe in FIGlet if you really want those big text with fancy fonts. You just import the library and generate like, from README:

>>> from pyfiglet import Figlet
>>> f = Figlet(font='slant')
>>> print f.renderText('text to render')
   __            __     __                               __
  / /____  _  __/ /_   / /_____     ________  ____  ____/ /__  _____
 / __/ _ \| |/_/ __/  / __/ __ \   / ___/ _ \/ __ \/ __  / _ \/ ___/
/ /_/  __/>  </ /_   / /_/ /_/ /  / /  /  __/ / / / /_/ /  __/ /
\__/\___/_/|_|\__/   \__/\____/  /_/   \___/_/ /_/\__,_/\___/_/

It supports many fonts, maybe even all of FIGlet fonts, run pyfiglet -l to get the list.

pyfiglet is made by Christopher Jones, Stefano Rivera, and Peter Waller, under the GPLv2. It first appeared in 2007, now the version 0.7 (2014-06-08), works for both Python 2 and 3.