root-tail - Man Page

Use COLOR as default.

Use font FONTSPEC. This can be either a fixed width font like -fn fixed or any font using -fn '-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*' with the appropriate fields filled out (see xfontsel).  Specifying a different FONTSPEC before each filename will cause each file to be displayed in a different font.

Forks to the background.

Display the files in reverse order, with the newest lines at the top.

Only display whole lines. If the last line of a file doesn't yet end with a newline character then wait until it does before displaying it. This is the default if more than one file is being displayed.

This is the opposite of the --whole option (see above). It displays lines even if they don't yet have a newline at the end. This is the default if only one file is being displayed.

Update partial lines 'in place' if they are still on the screen when they are updated in their files. Using --update automatically turns on --partial.

When partial lines are broken into two lines in the display, prefix the 2nd line with STRING. Defaults to "|| ". Specify the "--whole" argument to ensure partial lines are never displayed, or specify "--update" to attempt to "repair" broken lines in-place.

Use COLOR when displaying the continuation string (as optionally specified with the --cont option above).

The default behaviour is to fit as much as possible onto each line of output, even if this means splitting a word between one line and the next. The --wordwrap argument splits lines at spaces if possible.

After wrapping long lines, attempt to justify the text to produce a smooth right-hand margin.  Implies --wordwrap.

Re-display the file(s) and run COMMAND every SEC seconds. The default is to never re-display the file(s).

Add black shading to the font.

Add a black outline to the font (making redraws quite a bit slower).

Use minimum linespace even when using shading or outlining. This might result in leftover pixels (dependign on font and logfile content).

Use slower but flicker-free update.

Don't display the end of the file(s) initially.

Create a new window instead of reusing the root window. The newly created window covers the whole screen, puts itself behind all other windows and and does not accept events. Use this option if you use a compositing manager suihc as xcompmgr or compton, as the compositing extension has been very badly designed and cannot handle root windows correctly.

Use the given window ID for output instead of the root window.

Use the specified sleeping interval between checks instead of the default 2.4 seconds. Fractional values are OK.

Print version information.

Draw a frame around the selected area.  This is useful when trying to find the perfect geometry.