Today I found a software named
Lazyread which can read and
display file an autoscroll at a chosen speed. I had to read its source
code to make it work, the documentation isn’t very helpful, it doesn’t
read ebooks (as in epub or mobi format) and doesn’t support
stdin… This software requires some C code + a shell wrapper to
works, it’s complicated for only scrolling.
So, after thinking a few minutes, the autoscroll can be reproduced
easily with a very simple awk command. Of course, it will not have the
interactive keys like lazyread to increase/decrease speed or some
others options, but the most important part is there: autoscrolling.
If you want to read a file with a rate of 1 line per 700 millisecond,
just type the following command:
$ awk '{system("sleep 0.7");print}' file
Do you want to read an html file (documentation file on the disk or
from the web), you can use lynx or w3m to convert the html file on the
fly to a readable text and pass it to awk stdin.
$ w3m -dump doc/slsh/slshfun-2.html | awk '{system("sleep 0.7");print}'
$ lynx -dump doc/slsh/slshfun-2.html | awk '{system("sleep 0.7");print}'
$ w3m -dump https://dataswamp.org/~solene/ | awk '{system("sleep 0.7");print}'
Maybe you want to read a man page?
$ man awk | awk '{system("sleep 0.7");print}'
If you want to pause the reading, you can use the true unix way,
Ctrl+Z to send a signal which will stop the command and let it paused
in background. You can resume the reading by typing fg.
One could easily write a little script parsing parameters for setting
the speed or handling files or url with the correct command.
Notes: If for some reasons you try to use lazyread, fix the shebang
in the file lesspipe.sh and you will need to call lazyread binary with
the environment variable LESSOPEN="|./lesspipe.sh %s" (the path of
the script if needed). Without this variable, you will have a very
helpful error “file not found”.