dialog man page on FreeBSD

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DIALOG(1)							     DIALOG(1)

NAME
       dialog - display dialog boxes from shell scripts

SYNOPSIS
       dialog --clear
       dialog --create-rc file
       dialog  [ --title title ] [ --clear ] [ --hline line ] [ --hfile file ]
       box-options

DESCRIPTION
       Dialog is a program which allows you to present a variety of  questions
       or  display  messages in dialog box form from a shell script.  The fol‐
       lowing types of dialog objects are currently supported:

       yes/no box, menu box, input box,	 message  box,	text  box,  info  box,
       checklist box, program box, radiolist box, ftree and tree boxes.

OPTIONS
       --clear
	      The screen will be cleared to the screen attribute on exit.

       --create-rc file
	      Since  dialog  supports run-time configuration, this can be used
	      to dump a sample configuration file to  the  file	 specified  by
	      file.

       --title title
	      Specifies	 a title string to be displayed at the top of the dia‐
	      log box.

       --hline line
	      Specifies a line string to be displayed at  the  bottom  of  the
	      dialog box.

       --hfile file
	      Specifies a file to be displayed by pressing ? or F1.

       Box Options

       --yesno text height width [ yes | no ]
	      A yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width columns will be
	      displayed. The string specified by text is displayed inside  the
	      dialog  box.  If	this string is too long to fit in one line, it
	      will be automatically divided into multiple lines at the	appro‐
	      priate  points.  The text string may also contain the sub-string
	      "\n" or newline characters `\n´ to control line breaking explic‐
	      itly.   This  dialog  box	 is  useful  for asking questions that
	      require the user to answer either yes or no.  The dialog box has
	      a	 Yes  button  and  a  No  button, in which the user can switch
	      between by pressing the TAB key.	A Yes button  is  selected  by
	      default unless no is specified.

       --msgbox text height width
	      A message box is very similar to a yes/no box.  The only differ‐
	      ence between a message box and a yes/no box is  that  a  message
	      box  has only a single OK button. You can use this dialog box to
	      display any message you like.  After reading  the	 message,  the
	      user  can	 press	the ENTER key so that dialog will exit and the
	      calling shell script can continue its operation.

       --infobox text height width
	      An info box is basically a message box.  However, in this	 case,
	      dialog will exit immediately after displaying the message to the
	      user. The screen is not cleared when dialog exits, so  that  the
	      message will remain on the screen until the calling shell script
	      clears it later. This is useful when you want to inform the user
	      that  some operations are carrying on that may require some time
	      to finish.

       --inputbox text height width
	      An input box is useful when  you	want  to  ask  questions  that
	      require  the user to input a string as the answer. When inputing
	      the string, the BACKSPACE key can	 be  used  to  correct	typing
	      errors.  If the input string is longer than can be fitted in the
	      dialog box, the input field will be scrolled. On exit, the input
	      string will be printed on stderr.

       --textbox file height width
	      A	 text  box  lets  you display the contents of a text file in a
	      dialog box. It is like a simple text file viewer. The  user  can
	      move  through  the  file	by  using  the	UP/DOWN, PGUP/PGDN and
	      HOME/END keys available on most keyboards.  If the lines are too
	      long to be displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT keys can be used
	      to scroll the text region horizontally.  For  more  convenience,
	      forward and backward searching functions are also provided.

       --menu text height width menu-height [ tag item ] ...
	      As  its  name  suggests,	a menu box is a dialog box that can be
	      used to present a list of choices in the form of a menu for  the
	      user  to choose. Each menu entry consists of a tag string and an
	      item string. The tag gives the entry a name  to  distinguish  it
	      from the other entries in the menu. The item is a short descrip‐
	      tion of the option that the entry represents. The user can  move
	      between the menu entries by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first
	      letter of the tag as a hot-key, or the number  keys  1-9.	 There
	      are  menu-height	entries displayed in the menu at one time, but
	      the menu will be scrolled if there are more entries  than	 that.
	      When  dialog  exits,  the	 tag  of the chosen menu entry will be
	      printed on stderr.

       --prgbox command height width
	      A program box lets you display output of command in dialog box.

       --checklist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ...
	      A checklist box is similar to a menu box in that there are  mul‐
	      tiple entries presented in the form of a menu. Instead of choos‐
	      ing one entry among the entries, each entry can be turned on  or
	      off by the user. The initial on/off state of each entry is spec‐
	      ified by status.	On exit, a list of the tag  strings  of	 those
	      entries that are turned on will be printed on stderr.

       --radiolist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ...
	      A	 radiolist  box is similar to a checklist but it only allows a
	      single entry to be selected. One entry may initially  be	turned
	      on as specified by status.  On exit, the tag string of the entry
	      that is turned on will be printed on stderr.

       --ftree file FS text height width menu-height
	      ftree box is a dialog box showing the tree described by the data
	      from  the	 file  file.   The  data  in the file should look like
	      find(1)  output. For the find output,  the  field	 separator  FS
	      will  be ´/´. If height and width are positive numbers, they set
	      the absolute size of the whole ftree box. If  height  and	 width
	      are negative numbers, the size of the ftree box will be selected
	      automatically.  menu-height sets the height of the tree  subwin‐
	      dow  inside the ftree box and must be set.  text is shown inside
	      the ftree box above the tree subwindow and can  contain  newline
	      characters  '\n´ to split lines. One can navigate in the tree by
	      pressing UP/DOWN or  ´+´/´-´,  PG_UP/PG_DOWN  or	´b´/SPACE  and
	      HOME/END or ´g´/´G´.  A leaf of the tree is selected by pressing
	      TAB or  LEFT/RIGHT  the  OK  button  and	pressing  ENTER.   The
	      selected	leaf  (to  be more exact, the full path to it from the
	      root of the tree) is printed to  stderr.	 If  Cancel  and  then
	      ENTER  is	 pressed, nothing is printed to stderr.	 file may con‐
	      tain data like find(1) output, as well as	 like  the  output  of
	      find(1)  with  -d	 option.  Some	of  the transient paths to the
	      leaves of the tree may be absent. Such data  is  corrected  when
	      fed from file.

       --tree FS text height width menu-height [ item ] ...
	      tree box is like ftree box with some exceptions. First, the data
	      is not entered from a file, but from the command	line  as  item
	      item  ...	 Second, the data thus entered is not corrected in any
	      way.  Thus, the data like the output of find(1) with  -d	option
	      will look incorrectly.

RUN-TIME CONFIGURATION
       1.  Create a sample configuration file by typing:

		 "dialog --create-rc <file>"

       2.  At start, dialog determines the settings to use as follows:

	   a)  if  environment	variable DIALOGRC is set, its value determines
	       the name of the configuration file.

	   b)  if the file in (a) can't be found, use the file $HOME/.dialogrc
	       as the configuration file.

	   c)  if the file in (b) can't be found, use compiled in defaults.

       3.  Edit	 the  sample configuration file and copy it to some place that
	   dialog can find, as stated in step 2 above.

ENVIRONMENT
       DIALOGRC	      Define this variable if you want to specify the name  of
		      the configuration file to use.

FILES
       $HOME/.dialogrc	   default configuration file

DIAGNOSTICS
       Exit  status is 0 if dialog is exited by pressing the Yes or OK button,
       and 1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors occur
       inside  dialog  or  dialog  is exited by pressing the ESC key, the exit
       status is -1.

SEE ALSO
       dialog(3)

BUGS
       Text files containing tab characters may cause problems with text  box.
       Tab  characters	in  text files must first be expanded to spaces before
       being displayed by text box.

       Screen update is too slow.

       The ftree and tree boxes do not allow the tree to be moved to the  left
       or  to  the  right. Thus, if there are many levels of data, some of the
       leaves can be rendered invisible. A standard display with 80 characters
       allows  for  17 levels to be visible. Deeper levels are invisible. How‐
       ever, the navigation in the tree and selection of leaves do work.

AUTHOR
       Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk)

       Changes by Anatoly A. Orehovsky (tolik@mpeks.tomsk.su) (ftree and  tree
       boxes)

				2 October 1998			     DIALOG(1)
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