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This is edition EDITION of the manual for Flan Local-Access Notifier, Version VERSION, last updated on UPDATED.

Home page: http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/~anton/flan.html

Documentation: http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/ocelot/share/doc/flan/

Copyright © 2025, 2026 Anton McClure http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/~anton/

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. http://www.fsf.org/

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.

Flan Local-Access Notifier
**************************

Introduction
************

The Flan Local-Access Notifier (aka Flan) is a free digital calendar signage software, originally written for use at the University of Akron's College of Business.  Flan is maintained by Anton McClure (http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/~anton/) <anton@ocelot.cascaded.org>.

Downloading Flan
================

Flan is freely available at http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/~anton/flan.html.  It is released under the GNU General Public Licence version 3 or later.  See the file COPYING for details.

Tarballs downloads are available from Ocelot's FTP server over either the FTP (ftp://ftp.ocelot.cascaded.org/users/anton/flan/), HTTP (http://ftp.ocelot.cascaded.org/users/anton/flan/), and HTTPs (https://ftp.ocelot.cascaded.org/users/anton/flan/) protocols.

Requirements
------------

Flan requires the following packages:

  * Build-time

       * GNU Make

       * C compiler with C89 support (e.g., GCC)

       * X11 development headers and library

       * XPM development headers and library

       * ical development headers and library

  * Run-time

       * Xorg-compatible display server

       * X11 library

       * XPM library

       * ical library

Running Flan
============

Assuming that you've got a Flan configuration file set up already, simply run the command:

$flan /optional/path/to/config

If your are not currently using X11, you should run it with xinit like so:

$xinit flan /optional/path/to/config

If all goes well, Flan should open on your current TTY.  If you want to automate Flan, you may use the included systemd service file to do so. By default, the systemd script is configured to use TTY7 as Flan is intended to run standalone without an underlying desktop environment or window manager.

If you need to set up your config file, the next chapter, "Settings", goes over all of the settings categories and options that you will find in the standard issue sample config.

Settings
********

A sample configuration file may be found at http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/ocelot/share/doc/flan/flan.cfg. The settings are described below as follows.  At the end of the chapter is all of the settings as they will appear in the sample configuration file.

Main Settings
=============

These, long with ICS files, were the first editable options in Flan, with the goal of making it useful for more than just room 101 at the University of Akron College of Business.

refresh

     Time between data reloads.

days

     Number of days shown on-screen.

logo

     XPM image file used as on-screen logo.

title

     Title of calendar/organization.

regex

     Expression used to separate title and subtitle

Font Settings
=============

All of the fonts must be written using the X Logical Font Description (XLFD) format.

m

     Primary calendar font

a

     Secondary header font

l

     Primary header font

d

     Secondary calendar font

i

     Info bar font

Color Settings
==============

t_bgc

     Header background color

t_txt

     Header text color

b_bgc

     Calendar background color

b_txt

     Calendar text color

s_bgc

     Info bar background color

s_txt

     Info bar text color

c_bgc

     Cell background color

Text Settings
=============

Text is just written with the left and right sides separated by \\. This is not the default text, but Anton did not like how the PDF copy formatted it when the default text was used here.

Left side text\\Right side text

ICS Settings
============

Calendars are just written as title=link.

Test 1=ftp://ftp.example.cascaded.org/cal/test1.ics

All Together
============

All of the default settings as intended may look something like this:

     ; SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
     ;
     ; Sample flan.cfg for Flan
     ; http://www.ocelot.cascaded.org/~anton/flan.html
     ;
     ; Copyright (C) 2025-2026 Anton McClure
     ;
     ; Author: Anton McClure <anton@ocelot.cascaded.org>

     [main]
     refresh=3600
     days=3
     logo=/usr/local/share/flan/default.xpm
     title=Planning Flan
     regex=^(.+)[[:space:]]?--[[:space:]]?(.*)

     [fonts]
     m=-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-20-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
     a=-*-times-bold-r-normal-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
     l=-*-new century schoolbook-bold-r-normal-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
     d=-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-17-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
     i=-*-new century schoolbook-medium-r-*-*-17-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

     [colors]
     t_bgc=#4A6B8C
     t_txt=#FFFFFF
     b_bgc=#CCD3D7
     b_txt=#224466
     s_bgc=#3A5B71
     s_txt=#E3E3E5
     c_bgc=#FFFFFF

     [text]
     This is the planning flan\\This is test text
     Save this to /etc/flan.cfg\\and edit as needed.

     [ics]
     [ics]
     Test 1=/usr/local/share/flan/test1.ics
     Test 2=/usr/local/share/flan/test2.ics
     Test 3=/usr/local/share/flan/test3.ics

GNU Free Documentation License
******************************

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