Boxes is an open source text filter which can draw ASCII art boxes around its input text. Box design choices range from simple boxes to complex ASCII art. A box can also be removed and repaired, even if it has been badly damaged by editing of the text inside.
Since boxes may be open on any side, boxes can also be used to create regional comments in any programming language. New box designs of all sorts can easily be added and shared by appending to a free format configuration file.
boxes was originally intended to be used with the vim text editor, but it can be tied to any text editor which supports filters, as well as called from the command line as a standalone
tool.
This utility is useful for making the function headers in programming languages look more attractive, for spicing up news postings and emails, or just for decorating documentation files.
Features include:
- Draw ASCII art boxes around input text.
- Generation of regional comments in any programming language.
- Freely and conveniently user-configurable boxes.
- Alignment and positioning of text inside a box.
- Removal of boxes, even if box is damaged by editing of contained text.
- A number of preconfigured box designs in example config file.
- Many useful command line options (such as box size specification etc.).
- Regular expression substitutions on input text (e.g. used for quoting closing comment tags in a C comment box).
- Cross-platform support – Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Website: boxes.thomasjensen.com
Support: Documentation, FAQ, GitHub
Developer: Thomas Jensen and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
Filters are generally programs which read some input text from standard input, perform some modifications on it, and write the modified text to standard output. While a single filter can be used individually, they are frequently strung together to form a pipeline. Boxes is such a filter program.
Boxes is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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