8.3 Cowsay

This section describes the limitation of cowsay, but since version 2.1 cowsay is no longer used because of it. So none of the following limitations are present anymore.

When cowsay determines the length of a word it measures in number of bytes (in UTF-8), therefore non-ASCII words will malformat the balloon with the message.

Further, cowsay does not recognise ANSI escape sequences, therefore, using colours and text styling in messages will also malformat the balloon with the message.

cowsay does not support balloon, including the link between the message and the pony, customisation, other than using cowthink. However you can modify cowsay (written Perl, so you can edit the installed files) to make the balloon look different, maybe using box drawing characters.

cowsay does not support setting the minimum size of the balloon, both directions on the balloon–pony links. or any other placement of the balloon than at the top to the left.