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                   README FILE FOR bnbanner
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WHAT IS bnbanner?
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bnbanner is a utility for displaying large Bengali banners in
a text-only terminal. This is similar to the unix command
`banner'. The working of `banner' is implementation
dependent. Some systems print the text horizontally, some others
vertically. bnbanner prints Bengali text horizontally.

bnbanner is a script written in Perl. You must have version 5
of Perl for bnbanner to work.

HOW DOES bnbanner WORK?
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bnbanner takes input from the command line, parses each argument
according to some fixed roman-to-bengali conversion rules and
prints the text corresponding to it - one argument in one line
(I mean, in one logical line). In order to print spaces in a
(logical) line, use quotes in the command line.

bnbanner looks up its private library for printing the Bengali
characters. The library provides character-special files in
five different sizes for the Bengali alphabet. Each character
consists of a rectangular array of four characters : M, o, " and
space. This library is rather huge (approx. 1.7 Mb). You may,
however, install only parts of it, that is, files corresponding
to only as many sizes as you want. In that case, you will get
error messages, if you want to print a banner in an uninstalled
size.

The roman-to-bengali conversion rules are documented in a tutorial
in the directory named doc. The encoding files bn???.enc are at
the very heart for bnbanner to work. So you must install them
properly.

HOW TO CALL bnbanner
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To print bengali banners at the default size, call bnbanner as

   bnbanner string1 [string2 string3 ...]

For example,

   bnbanner shubha din

prints "shubha din" in two (logical) lines in the default size
(normal) - "shubha" in the first, "din" in the second. To print
both the words in a single line separated by a `space', call

   bnbanner "shubha din"

If you want to print banners at a different size, call bnbanner
as

   bnbanner -<size_specifier> string1 [string2 ...]

where <size_specifier> is one of the following:

   small  normal  large  huge  gigantic

If you do not specify a string to bnbanner, it returns immediately
(that is, it prints a null message). And finally, a call like

   bnbanner -h

or

   bnbanner -help

provides you a help message on the command-line possibilities with
bnbanner.

HOW TO INSTALL bnbanner
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The installation procedure is simple. Follow the steps:

0. Unpack the distribution and go to the bnbanner root
   directory (this directory). You must have done this,
   because you are reading this file.

      gunzip bnbanner.tar.gz
      tar xvf bnbanner.tar
      cd bnbanner

1. Decide a directory to install the bnbanner library, say,
   it is /usr/local/lib/bnbanner

2. Edit the Makefile and set INSTALLDIR to this directory.

3. Edit the Perl executible named bnbanner.pl in the directory
   ./bin. Change $INSTALLDIR to this directory (Line 9). Also
   change the first line of the file according as where you
   have Perl and in what name. If you do not know this, try

      whereis perl

   or

      where perl

   Thus, for example, if you have perl5.003 in the directory
   /opt/compilers/perl/bin, this line should be

   #!/opt/compilers/perl/bin/perl5.003

4. Fix a place for the executible. Say, it is /usr/local/bin.
   Edit the makefile and set BINDIR to this.

5. Now type

     make install

   at the bnbanner root directory.

6. If you are interested in installing the manual page for
   bnbanner, type

     make installman


DISTRIBUTE bnbanner
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bnbanner is a freeware. Permission is hereby granted to distribute
and mirror it free of charge as long as the original author gets
credit and this notice remains intact.

COPYRIGHT 1997 by
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Abhijit Das (Barda)
Department of Computer Science and Automation
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore 560 012
INDIA

E-mail: abhij@csa.iisc.ernet.in
URL: http://www2.csa.iisc.ernet.in/~abhij/

