Section 1: dialog



This page was been converted automatically, from Debian GNU/Linux man pages.




DIALOG(1)                                               DIALOG(1)


NAME

dialog - display dialog boxes from shell scripts

SYNOPSIS

dialog --clear dialog --create-rc file dialog --print-maxsize dialog common-options box-options

DESCRIPTION

Dialog is a program that will let you to present a variety of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script. Currently, these types of dialog boxes are implemented: checklist, gauge, infobox, inputbox, menu, msgbox (mes- sage), password, radiolist, tailbox, tailboxbg, textbox, and yesno (yes/no).

OPTIONS

Common Options --aspect ratio Specify a nominal line width based on the length of the prompt string to use as a guide to forcibly wrapping lines that are too long relative to the dialog box. The default is 9. --backtitle backtitle Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop, at the top of the screen. --beep Beep each time the screen is refreshed. --beep-after Beep if input is interrupted, e.g., by a control/C. --begin y x Specify the position of the upper left corner of a dialog box on the screen. --clear The screen will be cleared to the screen attribute on exit. This may be used as the only option. --cr-wrap Interpret embedded newlines in the dialog text as a newline on the screen. Otherwise, the text for each dialog will display on a single line. --create-rc file When dialog supports run-time configuration, this can be used to dump a sample configuration file to the file specified by file. Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 1 DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1) --help Prints the help message to standard error. The help message also will be printed if no options are given. --defaultno Make the default value of the yes/no box a No. --no-kill Tells dialog to put the tailboxbg box in the back- ground, printing its process id to standard error. SIGHUP is disabled for the background process. --no-shadow Suppress shadows which would be drawn to the right and bottom of each dialog box. --print-maxsize Print the maximum size of dialog boxes, i.e., the screen size, to the standard error. This must be used as the only option. --print-size Prints the size of each dialog box to standard error. --print-version Prints dialog's version to standard error. This may be the only option. --separate-output For checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with no quoting. This facilitates parsing by another program. --separate-widget Specify a string that will separate the output on standard error from each widget. This is used to simplify parsing the result of a dialog with sev- eral widgets. --shadow Draw a shadow to the right and bottom of each dia- log box. --size-err Check the resulting size of a dialog box before trying to use it, printing the resulting size if it is larger than the screen. (This option is obso- lete, since all new-window calls are checked). --sleep secs Sleep (delay) for the given number of seconds after processing a dialog box. Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 2 DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1) --tab-correct Convert each tab character to one or more spaces. Otherwise, tabs are rendered according to the curses library's interpretation. --tab-len n Specify the number of spaces that a tab character occupies if the --tab-correct option is given. The default is 8. --title title Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the dialog box. Box Options --checklist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ... A checklist box is similar to a menu box; there are multiple entries presented in the form of a menu. Instead of choosing 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 specified by status. On exit, a list of the tag strings of those entries that are turned on will be printed on stderr. --gauge text height width percent A gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of the box. The meter indicates the percentage. New percentages are read from standard input, one inte- ger per line. The meter is updated to reflect each new percentage. If stdin is XXX, then subsequent lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt. The gauge exits when EOF is reached on stdin. --infobox 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 [init] An input box is useful when you want to ask ques- tions that require the user to input a string as the answer. If init is supplied it is used to ini- tialize the input string. 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 Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 3 DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1) will be scrolled. On exit, the input string will be printed on stderr. --msgbox A message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The only difference between a message box and a yes/no box is that a message box has only a single OK but- ton. 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. --passwordbox A password box is similar to an input box, except that the text the user enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompting for passwords or other sensitive information. Be aware that if any- thing is passed in "init", it will be visible in the system's process table to casual snoopers. Also, it is very confusing to the user to provide them with a default password they cannot see. For these reasons, using "init" is highly discouraged. --radiolist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ... A radiolist box is similar to a menu box. The only difference is that you can indicate which entry is currently selected, by setting its status to on. --tailbox Display text from a file in a dialog box, as in a "tail -f" command. --textboxbg Display text from a file in a dialog box in a back- ground process, as in a "tail -f &" command. --textbox 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 horizon- tally. 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. Choices are displayed in the order given. Each menu entry Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 4 DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1) 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 description of the option that the entry repre- sents. 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. --yesno text height width 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 be fitted in one line, it will be automatically divided into multiple lines at appropriate places. The text string may also contain the sub-string "\n" or newline characters `\n' to control line breaking explicitly. 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. RUN-TIME CONFIGURATION 1. Create a sample configuration file by typing: "dialog --create-rc " 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 Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 5 DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1)

DIAGNOSTICS

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

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.

AUTHOR

Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3 Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version 0.4 Thomas Dickey (updates for 0.9b) Dialog Version 0.4 10 June 1994 6