Last Updated on May 25, 2022
In Operation
Boxes offers 65 different styles in its configuration file (/etc/boxes-config). Here’s an example of one of the styles, whirly.
As the image shows, Boxes has drawn an ASCII art boxes around input text. Quite stylish!
It’s quite easy to define your own box designs if none of the 65 designs meet your specific requirements. New box designs of all sorts can easily be added and shared by appending to the program’s configuration file.
Other features of the software include:
- Generation of regional comments in any programming language.
- Freely and conveniently user-configurable boxes.
- Alignment and positioning of text inside a box. You can define horizontal and vertical alignment of the input text block. It’s also possible to define the justification of lines within the input text block (left justification, center, or right justification).
- Removal of boxes, even if a box is damaged by editing of contained text. The mended box is drawn according to the options given.
- Many useful command line options are present (such as box size specification, indentation mode, padding, remove leading/trailing blank lines, control how tabs are treated, and much more).
- Regular expression substitutions on input text (e.g. used for quoting closing comment tags in a C comment box).
To give you a good idea about the different designs, here’s a short video showing each of the designs.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Linux Candy | |
|---|---|
| ASCIIQuarium | Embrace marine life from the terminal with beautiful ASCII art |
| ASCII Art Converter | A small utility that converts images into ASCII art |
| BobRossQuotes | Collection of quotes from Bob Ross |
| Boxes | Command line ASCII boxes |
| Buoh | Online strips comics reader |
| cacafire | Color ASCII fire |
| catclock | xclock with an enhanced cat mode |
| cbonsai | Generate bonsai trees in the terminal |
| christmasfetch | Festive cheer on the desktop |
| chucknorris | Chuck Norris jokes in your terminal |
| cornyjokes | Corny jokes for the terminal |
| CMatrix | ncurses program that simulates the display from “The Matrix” |
| ctree | A Christmas tree right on your terminal |
| eDEX-UI | Sci-fi computer terminal emulator and system monitor |
| emoj | Simple tool that to find suitable emojis for pasting to your clipboard |
| Emote | Modern popup emoji picker |
| Evolvotron | Interactive generative art |
| Fantascene | Dynamic wallpaper changer |
| Fondo | Find beautiful wallpapers from Unsplash |
| gti | Typo-based curio inspired by Steam Locomotive |
| Hollywood | Fill your console with Hollywood melodrama technobabble |
| linuxwave | Generate music from the entropy of Linux |
| lolcat | Rainbows and unicorns |
| No More Secrets | Recreates the data decryption effect from the Sneakers movie |
| nook | Plays Animal Crossing hourly themes on the hour |
| nyancat | Terminal-based Pop Tart Cat Animation |
| oneko | Animal chasing fun |
| pipes.sh | Animated pipes terminal screensaver |
| ponysay | cowsay reimplemention for ponies |
| projectM | Music visualizer originally based on Milkdrop |
| pscircle | A different take on the venerable ps command |
| PyBonsai | Generates procedural ASCII art trees |
| pyjokes | One line jokes for programmers |
| Pywal | Generate color schemes on the fly |
| Relaxator | Relax to soothing sounds |
| Rusty Aquarium | Monitoring by visualization |
| Steam Locomotive | C program written in 295 lines. It's harmless fun |
| Ternimal | Animated lifeform in the terminal |
| terminal-parrot | Party parrot time |
| tetris | Tile-matching puzzle video game in your terminal |
| Variety | Wallpaper manager with many desktops and wallpaper sources |
| WallGen | Generate HQ poly wallpapers with a few arguments. |
| WallpaperDownloader | Download, change, and manage wallpapers |
| xcowsay | Displays a cow on your desktop with message |
| XDecorations | Add some festive cheer to your desktop |
| XScreenSaver | Framework and collection of screensavers |