makeSIGN understands quite a few commandline options. The complete set looks like this:
makesign [-?SVeoqsv] [-f FOOTERFILE] [-h HEADERFILE] [--help]
[--strict] [--version] [--equal] [--override] [--quiet]
[--separator] [--verbose] [--footer FOOTERFILE] [--header
HEADERFILE] outfile infile_1 [infile_2 ... infile_20]
All of the long commandline switches can be abbreviated. The abbreviations look like this:
-? --help
-S --strict
-V --version
-e --equal
-o --override
-q --quiet
-s --separator
-v --verbose
-f --footer
-h --header
(To all you Linux users out there: The case of the long commandline options is not important.)
A short help with all commandline options is printed. No signature is generated.
makeSIGN will produce no signature longer than 4 lines. The common length of a signature is 4 lines and some people might be bothered if you use longer ones. The --strict option cannot be used when --header or --footer are set to standard input.
makeSIGN will print its version number and exit.
All mottoes will be considered equal: The control lines in the motto files are ignored, there are neither "better" nor "worse" mottoes.
makeSIGN will use the footer and header given by --footer and --header and will ignore the footer and header given in the motto files.
makeSIGN doesn't print any error messages. This might be useful if you want to pipe the signature to another program.
The signature is prepended by the line "--
". This is the
common delimiter of a signature in eMails or News articles.
makeSIGN will print all status and error messages. It's mainly for debugging and makes the program look very busy :-)
The given file FOOTERFILE
is appended to the random motto. If you set
the footer file to -
it will be read from standard input.
The given file HEADERFILE
is prepended to the random motto. If you
set the header file to -
it will be read from standard input.
This is the file to where the signature is written. This argument must be
given. If you set the output file to -
the signature will be written
to standard output.
In these files the mottoes are stored. You can use up to 20 files at once. At least one file must be given. The format of these files is described at the motto files section.