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PC-SIG Diskette Library (Disk #477)
[PCjs Machine "ibm5170"]
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Information about “NAMEGRAM”
What do Lewis Carroll, Vladimir Nabokov, Jim Morrison, and Roman
Polanski have in common? They all played with anagrams. Lewis Carroll
rearranged politician William Ewart Gladstone's name to spell "wild
agitator! means well". Nabokov named a character in Lolita "Vivian
Drakbloom", an anagram of his own name. Jim Morrison of "The Doors" was
"Mr. Mojo Risen'". And in the movie Rosemary's Baby, an anagram is an
important clue. Picture these creative artists hunched over a desk
with a big dictionary arranging Scrabble titles to form words. If only
they had NAMEGRAM! With NAMEGRAM, creating anagrams is a breeze.
NAMEGRAM takes a name or phrase, of up to 40 characters, and, using each
letter only once, creates anagrams. The output, 1 to 16 letters each,
are real English words. A curious, but fascinating exercise.
BREK2.TXT
┌──────────────┐
╔══════════════════════════════╡ BREAK DOWN ╞══════════════════════════════╗
║ ┌───────────┴──────────────┴───────────┐ ║
║ │ copyright 1985 by Neil J. Rubenking │ ║
║ └──────────────────────────────────────┘ ║
║ ║
║ BreakDown -- a text analysis program by Neil J. Rubenking, inspired by ║
║ the article on the "TRAVESTY" program in the November 1984 BYTE, by ║
║ Kenner and O'Rourke, which was itself inspired by Brian Hayes' article ║
║ in the November 1983 Scientific American. ║
║ This program, written in TURBO Pascal, uses BORLAND's TURBO ║
║ TOOLBOX to manage its data. Note that the DATA files it produces will ║
║ be B I G. In the unlikely case of NO repetition of text patterns, the ║
║ .DAT file will be S*C bytes, where S is the # of bytes in the source, ║
║ and C is the number of characters being tracked (currently 34). You ║
║ will have the chance to distribute the files to various disks. ║
║ You can read several texts into the same BreakDown, or Merge two ║
║ BreakDowns. In this way, you can build up a "style table" for one ║
║ author, or create bizarre hybrids. ║
║ ┌────────────────────────┐ ║
╚═════════════════════════╡ PRESS A KEY TO BEGIN ╞═════════════════════════╝
└────────────────────────┘
BREKDOWN.DOC
BREAK DOWN
A text analysis and generation program
written in TURBO Pascal
copyright 1985 by Neil J. Rubenking
requires DOS 2.0, 96K
I.AN ANALOGY
There is a fairly commonly believed "fact" that if you
set millions of monkeys typing at random on millions of
typewriters for millions of years, they would eventually crank
out all the world's great literature. Deep down inside, BREAK
DOWN is just one of those monkeys, but this monkey is educated.
BREAK DOWN "reads" a text and creates a frequency table that
gives it some method in its madness. The output can be surpri-
singly similar to the input.
II. WHAT DOES IT DO?
To analyze a text, BREAK DOWN looks at it in chunks of
a particular size (one less than the "order") and keeps a record
of what characters occur immediately after that pattern. If
the chunk is new to the frequency table, it is added to the
table. Its frequency array is initially all zeros, except for
the current next character. If the chunk already exists in
the table, its frequency array is incremented by one for the
current next character. Then the "chunk" is shifted one charac-
ter to the right and the process goes on -- that is, the chunk's
first character is dropped and the current next character
is tacked onto the end.
III. WHAT MAKES IT SPECIAL?
Checking to see if the chunk is present would be quite a
task if the frequency table were stored sequentially. Fortuna-
tely, BORLAND International sells a product called TURBO TOOLBOX
that implements fast indexed storage, using the B-Tree system.
(For a discussion of B-Tress and TURBO TOOLBOX, see the February
1985 PC Tech Journal). The chunks of text are stored in the
B-Tree index file -- they are the KEYS. The data file contains
only the frequency arrays. Ordinarily, the KEYS would also be
stored in the data file, but this redundancy is not strictly
necessary. Since the data file can conceivably contain one
record for every BYTE in the source, we want to keep the record
size to a minimum. (This "worst case" would occur if NO pattern
in the text occurred more than once.)
IV. WHAT ARE THE INPUT LIMITS?
At present, BREAK DOWN tracks 34 characters. These are
the 26 lower-case alphabetic characters, the space, period,
comma, dash, question mark, number symbol and single quote, and
ASCII character 20, the paragraph symbol. If a line is shorter
than the constant "LineWidth" (currently set to 55), it is
considered to have ended "early" with a hard Carriage Return, and
is marked with the paragraph symbol at the end. In the pre-
processing phase (procedure "CleanUp"), all letters are converted
to lower-case, all numbers are reduced to a single # symbol,
double quotes become single quotes, and all unused punctuation is
removed. It would, of course, be possible to track more charac-
ters, but each character adds a byte to every record.
V. HOW DOES IT WORK?
To generate a new text, BREAK DOWN selects at random a
KEY that begins with a space (i.e., one that doesn't start in
the middle of a word.) It then looks up the frequency array for
that KEY and selects the next character at random from the
characters with non-zero frequency, weighted by the frequencies.
This character is added to the current output line, and to the
current KEY chunk. If the paragraph symbol is encountered, the
line is automatically ended. Also, the current line ends at the
first space encountered after its length surpasses the LineWidth
constant. The first alphabetic character after a period,question
mark, or line end is capitalized.
VI. HOW SHOULD I SET IT UP?
BREAK DOWN is a prime candidate for RAMDisk operation. The
B-Tree file access limits the number of disk accesses quite
a bit, but there are still several accesses for each BYTE in
the source file. The data file of a text under 10K in length
will definitely fit on one floppy, but an 11K file could
conceivably run over that length. You are expected to be sure
you have enough space. You may distribute your files to various
disk drives -- a likely arrangement is .DAT file on drive B
and source, .INX file, and BREAK DOWN program on drive A.
VII. TIPS FOR USE
The higher the order, the more intelligible the output
will be. However, a high order and a short text will mostly
just regenerate the original. Experiment with various texts
and various orders. You can use the [L]ist option to see just
what sort of records are being generated. BREAK DOWN has been
tried on a 100K text file, with the Order set to the maximum of
8. It took over 6 hours and generated a 1.8 megabyte data file,
but it worked.
VIII. DEFAULT OPTIONS
BREAK DOWN will prompt you for the Order each time you make
a selection from the menu. After you have entered an Order, you
can just hit <return> for the previous value. The MAIN file name
works the same way -- after the first time you enter it, hitting
<return> will recall the same name. The default for the .DAT
and .INX drives, and the output file, if any, is the same as the
source file. Thus, if you have [A]nalyzed a text with all its
files on one drive, you can fill in the blanks for [G]enerating a
travesty by repeatedly hitting <return>.
IX. ADVANCED (?) USE
The [M]erge option lets you combine two data files, possibly
from wildly different sources. The data and index files of
the"source" will be permanently changed, so you may want to keep
a copy. You can also "read in" another text into an existing
data file. Use this option to build up a frequency table
"model" of a particular author, or to make bizarre hybrids.
X. WHAT'S IT GOOD FOR?
BREAK DOWN is a moderately sophisticated database program
with almost no "serious" uses. However, there are all kinds of
non-serious uses for it. Read in three or four "letters from
camp" and then let the PC generate more. Generate new speeches
based on Our President's proclamations. Find out what Lewis
Carroll would have written had he been a Zen Master. Or examine
the program itself to see how the TURBO TOOLBOX can be used to
manage other sorts of data.
XI. CREDITS
This program was inspired by the TRAVESTY program in
the November 1984 BYTE magazine, by Kenner and O'Rourke. They
in turn were inspired by an article in the Scientific American of
November 1983 by Brian Hayes. Both these articles make good
reading. TURBO TOOLBOX and TURBO Pascal are available from
BORLAND International, 4113 Scotts Valley Road, Scotts Valley, CA
95066. BREAK DOWN itself was written by Neil J. Rubenking.
This program may be freely used and copied, but I retain the sole
right to SELL it. Users Groups and Software Clubs may charge a
reasonable price for the disk and copying/handling charges.
FILES477.TXT
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disk No 477 Name Gram / Break Down / Fone Word v2.2 DS2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Namegram is a program that takes an input word, usually a name, and compares
it to a set of compressed word files. In doing this, it can generate a set of
anagrams of the word or name. Break Down is a strange, but interesting
program. It has almost no practical uses, except perhaps for entertainment,
but this does not limit its value. This algorithym takes an input text file
(I tried about two paragraphs of an old English paper) and transforms the
source text into a bunch of sentences that make little to no sense, but
somehow they do!?
------------ Name Gram
NAMESMAL COM Main program
MASHED 02 Compressed word files used by Namegram
MASHED 03 Compressed word files used by Namegram
MASHED 04 Compressed word files used by Namegram
MASHED 05 Compressed word files used by Namegram
MASHED 06 Compressed word files used by Namegram
READNAME COM Screen driven DOCumentation program for Namegram (33k)
------------ Break Down
BREKDOWN COM Main Program
BREKDOWN PAS Pascal source code for Brekdown program
BREKDOWN DOC Short documentation for Brekdown (3 pages)
BREKDOWN XMP Some examples of text generated by Brekdown (3 pages)
BREK2 TXT Associated text file used by Brekdown
ROMEO O5T Order-5 Breakdown of the "window scene" from Romeo & Juliet
ROMEO O8T Order-8 Breakdown of same, cleaned up and puntuated.
REAGAN OUT Order-8 Breakdown of the '85 State Of The Union address
------------ Phone Word
FONEWORD COM Main Program
FONEWORD DOC Documentation of Foneword program
WORDFONE COM Reverses Foneword program
------------ BONUS files: Created using my PIANOMAN program
WILDWEST COM "The Wild West Is Where I Wanna Be" by Tom Lehrer
WILLTELL COM "The William Tell Overture" by G.A. Rossini
INVENTN4 COM Two-part Invention #4 in D-Minor, by J.S. Bach
CIRCUS COM Theme from Monty Python's Flying Circus, by J.P. Sousa
PC-SIG (Software Interest Group)
1030 East Duane Avenue, Suite D
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
(408) 730-9291
FONEWORD.DOC
| FONEWORD and WORDFONE | Written by Neil J. Rubenking |
| | 300 Page St. |
| inspired by Patrick Cox of PC-SIG | San Francisco, CA 94102 |
===========================================================================
Would people remember your phone number better if they heard it in the
form of a word? Can you remember that IBM's PC User Group support line
has the phone number IBM-PCUG? Pretty easy, isn't it. FONEWORD will
take your phone number and return all 2,187 possible equivalent words.
The "0" and "1" buttons don't have any letters on them, so they pass
without change. You can view the result as 11 screenfuls on your
monitor, or have it printed out as 4 pages.
If, like me, you have trouble DIALING word-type phone numbers, WORDFONE
is the program for you. Enter "WORDFONE" and the word, and it quickly
returns the number to dial. E.g., "WORDFONE ENGLAND" returns 364-5263.
Patrick felt that a program like this would be useful in business. If it
is indeed of use to you, a contribution of $5 or $10 will encourage me to
continue writing software on this basis.
I could write a version of FONEWORD that would actually check for REAL
words, or combinations of words. However, I probably won't unless a
lot of interest is shown.
NEW: If you have trouble reading the FONEWORD screens on a B&W composite
monitor, just add the parameter /BW -- e.g., "FONEWORD /BW".
Directory of PC-SIG Library Disk #0477
Volume in drive A has no label
Directory of A:\
BREK2 TXT 1724 8-02-85 3:30p
BREKDOWN COM 34066 5-19-86 9:01a
BREKDOWN DOC 8525 2-06-85 5:24p
BREKDOWN PAS 31991 12-18-85 6:27p
BREKDOWN XMP 5859 2-06-85 5:29p
CIRCUS COM 45056 7-21-86 6:13p
FILES477 TXT 2257 9-29-86 1:23p
FONEWORD COM 19442 5-28-86 3:30p
FONEWORD DOC 1541 5-28-86 3:31p
GO BAT 1565 9-29-86 10:42a
INVENTN4 COM 3955 11-29-84 6:35p
MASHED 02 128 12-22-85 6:14p
MASHED 03 1152 11-23-85 7:42a
MASHED 04 5248 4-23-85 6:24a
MASHED 05 13952 4-24-85 7:45p
MASHED 06 27008 4-28-85 8:18a
NAMESMAL COM 28290 5-28-86 2:28p
READNAME COM 45199 5-28-86 3:13p
READTHIS 1ST 1200 7-23-86 10:58a
REAGAN OUT 17920 8-03-85 8:21a
ROMEO O5T 4031 5-14-86 1:24p
ROMEO O8T 3584 5-14-86 12:28p
WILDWEST COM 24320 5-06-86 9:13p
WORDFONE COM 12408 5-25-86 11:39a
24 file(s) 340421 bytes
9216 bytes free