Show text in large type on the screen via terminal

Question

I can put large text on the center of my screen with certain apps, such as Address Book (click on a phone number and choose "Show in Large Type") or using Quicksilver (type some text and choose the "Large Type" action).

Is there any way I can invoke this functionality from the terminal, to show arbitrary large text by writing, say, Applescript or a bash script?

Answer 1

Since you already have QuickSilver installed:

osascript -e 'tell application "Quicksilver" to show large type "your text here"'

You can use this to define a bash function (and put somewhere like ~/.profile):

function big {
        osascript -e "tell application \"Quicksilver\" to show large type \"$1\""
}

Then you can invoke it with arbitrary strings by doing

$ big "This will cause large text to appear"