DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / ticker / ticker.1.en
NAME(1) General Commands Manual NAME(1)

ticker - scroll messages across the screen

ticker [options] [message]

ticker is a program that continually scrolls a given message across the screen. There is also an interface to allow other programs to change the message.

+, [up arrow]
Increase scroll speed.
-, [down arrw]
Decrease scroll speed.
[space]
Pause. Press any key to unpause.

Show summary of options.
Scroll text on the top line of the screen. (Default)
Scroll text on the bottom line of the screen.
Use the specified color as the foreground color of the text that is scrolled. The colors that may be used are:

black gray
red brightred
green brightgreen
brown yellow
blue brightblue
magenta brightmagenta
cyan brightcyan
lightgray white
Use the specified color as the background color of the text that is scrolled. On most terminals, the background color can only be one of the colors listed in the first column above.
Number of seconds delay between updates of the display. This controls how fast the text scrolls. You may use decimals to specify faster scroll speeds. The default delay is 1 second; I find 0.1 more pleasing.
Read messages to display from the sysv shared memory segment with an id of num. This is only for use by other programs that need to be able to change the text ticker displays.
Size of the shared memory segment to read, when using shared memory communication with another program. Default is 80 characters.
Minimum time between checks of the shared memory segment for a new message. Default is every second. It may in fact check considerably less often, as it only checks for a new message once per time that the current message scrolls around the screen.
The message to scroll. Required unless -s is used, in which case it is optional.

To use the other 23 or so lines of your screen for something useful while the ticker is running, you might want to use splitvt(1)

Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>