banner command
This page implements the COHERENT banner command. The manual page is here. The original source banner.c, datestamped 10/09/90, defines function banner() but has no main(), so I wrote a trivial banner_main.c wrapper for it. The source for this page recodes banner from C to PHP, of course, but it uses the original bitmap and produces output identical to the original.
I remember banner fondly because lineprinter output jobs at Mark Williams Company were separated by banner pages giving the user's name.
COHERENT banner renders each letter as a 5x7 grid (space-padded to 8x9) using the letter itself, a nice touch. It takes command-line args or reads from stdin. Cygwin banner renders each letter as a 7x9 grid (space-padded to 8x13) using 'x'. A command line option lets you change the output character, but it has no option to read from stdin. OSX banner renders much larger (and very handsome!) letters with '#'. It takes an optional width argument and produces a single line of vertical output.
Enter a word or phrase (e.g., "hello world"):
h ll ll h l l hhhh eee l l ooo h h e e l l o o h h eeeee l l o o h h e l l o o h h eee lll lll ooo ll d l d w w ooo r rr l dddd w w o o rr r l d d w w w o o r l d d w w w o o r l d d w w ooo r lll dddd