Fortune Cookie

This package prints a fortune in your scratch buffer, just like you may have in your shell. If cowsay is installed, it can use that too.

Usage

The minor mode will set initial-scratch-message with a fortune.

(fortune-cookie-mode)

If you don't use package.el you'll need to manually add the package to your load path and require it.

See the Emacs customize group fortune-cookie for the available variables and their documentation (including command paths and flags).

The fortune-cookie interactive function can be called directly to get a new fortune as a string.

Example

I use the following setup in my .emacs.d, which utilizes John Wiegley's use-package. It sets the cowfile to our favorite mascot, Tux.

;; inhibit startup message
(setq inhibit-startup-message t)

(use-package fortune-cookie
  :config
  (setq fortune-cookie-cowsay-args  "-f tux -s")
  (fortune-cookie-mode))

Which placed this in my *scratch* buffer:

;;  ___________________________________
;; / Pohl's law:                       \
;; |                                   |
;; | Nothing is so good that somebody, |
;; \ somewhere, will not hate it.      /
;;  -----------------------------------
;;    \
;;     \
;;         .--.
;;        |o_o |
;;        |:_/ |
;;       //   \ \
;;      (|     | )
;;     /'\_   _/`\
;;     \___)=(___/