paulkaefer / cowsay-files

A collection of additional/alternative cowsay files.

cowsay-files

These files are intended to supplement the cow files in /usr/share/cowsay/cows.

echo Exterminate! | cowsay -f dalek

For more on cowsay, consult its Wikipedia article.

examples

A sample of each cow file in this repository is here. Note that the ANSI cows like bender.cow will only render properly if your terminal client supports color. True color (those under the true-color/ subdirectory) cows will only render in terminals that support full 24-bit color.

installation

To install Cowsay-files, clone the repo or download the distribution tarball. Then run:

make install

Or to install it to a custom location:

make install prefix=/path/to/your/custom/installation/location

Mac users can alternatively use the Homebrew tap from cowsay-org/homebrew-cowsay:

brew install cowsay-org/cowsay/cowsay-apj

Or:

brew tap cowsay-org/cowsay
brew install cowsay-apj

cowrc.sh file

This file allows you to configure a list of cows to randomly display when opening a new terminal session.

• Note - this file counts on fortune being installed to display your random fortunes.

Can be made use of by adding the following line to your .bashrc file (or .zshrc if you use ZSH):

. /usr/local/share/cowsay-files/cowrc.sh

Now you will have some commands available and get a random cow fortune on every new terminal session :)

.bashrc file

If you want to have random cows everytime that you login or open a shell, add this to your .bashrc.

COWS=(/usr/local/share/cowsay-files/cows/*)
RAND_COW=$(($RANDOM % $( ls /usr/local/cowsay-files/cows/*.cow | wc -l )))
cowsay -f ${COWS[$RAND_COW]} "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US"

alternate installation locations

If you installed Cowsay-files to an alternate location, replace /usr/local with the path to your custom prefix in the above instructions.

If you want to run Cowsay-files directly from the cloned repo, replace /usr/local/share with the path to your cloned cowsay-files Git repo in the above instructions.

Cowsay file converter

Fancy pixel art cows can now be created with ease using Charc0al's cowsay file converter

Instructions:

1. Create PNG or other uncompressed image of the size you want (recommend no larger than 50 x 50). I recommend using GIMP.
   • Note: The first (upper-left) pixel (0, 0) color is assumed to be background color and will not appear in the cowsay image.
   • Colors will be mapped to default bash color palette, any colors in your image that are not part of the 256 color bash palette will be mapped to the nearest color in the palette.
2. Upload image in converter & press Convert!
3. Enjoy!

Tips for creating pixel art cows:

• For manually editing colors or creating cows, you can run the cowsay-palette command (if you are making use of cowrc.sh) to get a display of your terminal color palette and the corresponding color codes.
• If you are scaling down a pixel art image from a larger size, make sure to set "Interpolation" to None/Off or you will get color bleed between pixels.
• It is helpful to use a background color that is bright and very different from all other colors on your image so you can clearly see which pixels are background and which are image. I usually use hot pink or neon green.

Try converting some of the examples!