ponysay — cowsay reimplemention for ponies.
Today your terminal, tomorrow the world!
Download or clone the project.
In the terminal, cd into the ponysay directory and ./setup.py --freedom=partial install or python3 setup.py --freedom=partial install.
Superuser permissions might be required in order to run ./setup.py --freedom=partial install without --private, on most systems this
can be achieved by running sudo ./setup.py --freedom=partial install.
If installing only the completely free ponies is desired, --freedom=strict should be used instead of --freedom=partial.
For additional information, an extensive manual in PDF is provided.
In order to use ponysay, run:
ponysay "I am just the cutest pony!"
Or if you have a specific pony in your mind:
ponysay -f pinkie "Partay!~"
Consult info ponysay, man 6 ponysay or ponysay -h for additional information.
Spanish and Turkish manuals are also available: man -L es 6 ponysay and 'man -L tr 6 ponysay` respectively.
The package is in the official repositories as community/ponysay. A Git version is also present, named ponysay-git in AUR.
A git version of the package is available as ponysay-git in CCR, alongside a stable package called ponysay.
There is a package for Gentoo, to make installation and updating simple. You can find it in this overlay. The package is named games-misc/ponysay.
Debian packages can be found here.
There is a PPA available, specifically for ponysay, containing packages for all currently supported Ubuntu releases here.
A ponysay Homebrew formula is available.
This requires the fortune utility to be installed. It can install be from the distribution's repositories (might be named fortune-mod).
Alternatively, one can just fetch the source code from here.
You can try this script or ponypipe to ponify fortunes.
Edit your ~/.bashrc and add this to the end of the file
fortune | ponysay
Afterwards, every time you open a terminal a pony should give you a fortune.
Running ponysay -q will print a random pony saying one of its quotes from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The pony can be specified: ponysay -q pinkie.
Just as with -f, -q can be used multiple times to specify a set of ponies from which a single one will be selected randomly.
When running ponysay -l or ponysay -L the ponies with quotes will be printed in bold or bright (depending on the used terminal).
If you have a custom colour palette edit your ~/.bashrc and add
if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
function ponysay
{
exec ponysay "$@"
#RESET PALETTE HERE
}
fi
Read the PDF or info manual for more information.
coreutils: stty in coreutils used to determine size of the terminal.
python>=3: ponysay is written in Python 3.
gzip: Used for compressing manuals (suppressable with ./configure --without-info-compression --without-man-compression).
texinfo: Used for building the info manual (suppressable with ./configure --without-info).
python>=3: The installation process is written in Python 3.
Run ./dependency-test.sh if things are not working for you.
Q: The output looks like a mess in (TTY/PuTTY/other)!
A: Unfortunately we cannot make it perfect, see issue 1. But we have done a lot, read more about how to get the best of the current state of the art has to offer in the manual.
Q: The output looks like a mess in (xfce4-terminal/mate-terminal/xterm/[...]) with (this) font!
A: We use blocks for printing the ponies, if the blocks are misaligned, or if you do not use a truly monospaced font with aligned blocks try another monospaced font, such as 'Fixed [...]' or 'Liberation Mono.'
Q: You are missing (my-favourite-pony)!
A: Ask and we'll add!
Q: Which programs do you use to generate the pony files?
A: The pony files are in fact mostly a bunch of selected browser ponies, converted using util-say, Other are taken from desktop ponies, and the others are created specifically for ponysay.
The PDF manual should answer most of your questions.