Mega Texter V2.0
(C) by Guido Wegener 22.7.1990
       Eisenacher Str. 2
°ª°    5300 Bonn 1
       West Germany

This program is Freeware and may be copied as long as this .doc-file is
included and no profit is made by distributing.
You may use parts of this program if you mention the author.

Short Description :
 Mega Texter is a useless joke, using a text file as input for creating
 a text output in a similar style as the initial text.
 This is done by choosing a string of characters and searching for it
 in the text. If it is found more than once, the program chooses one
 of the found passages randomly. The char following the string in the
 text is printed out, the string is scrolled left and the new char is
 put at the end of it.

Example output :
 (The following text is the raw output of Mega Texter, with some returns
  inserted to make it readable. The input text is a scroll text, the
  depth was 7)
 RECORD OF SCROLL-TEXT-AFTER-GETTING BETTER : I DIDN'T WHISTLE !!!
 ... JO !!! 2:1 FOR ITALIA'S MEN RAN THROUGH MADISON: THAT THE MILKY WAY.
 WE KNOW THEY START SOME SWEETS AND STILL FIRST PLACE IN THE SAME GROUP
 AS MY LEVEL LANGUAGES, THIS TALKING ABOUT :   THERE AND SHORTER THAN LIGHT !
 MADISON TALKED ABOUT WHAT I SHOULD RECEIVE LETTERS, SO WRITE ONLY ONE
 REASON WHY YOU ARE ONE OF THE STUPID AS ASSEMBLER:
 IN THE OLD GOLDEN DAYS) THERE HERE ???'
 WE RAN TO THE ST IS BETTER AND DON'T KNOW, WHAT THE OTHER CRAP...
 BUT MADISON: HE WON'T WIN 23:2 (I HOPE THAT I

History :
 I found the algorithm in an old edition of Scientific American.
 While being on holidays with three other freaks and two AMIGAS, I wrote
 the first version of it. After some fun with that, I started to make it
 look more like an Amiga-program. (The first version had no window or menu,
 it just printed the text on the CLI-window...)
 This became Mega Texter V2.0.
 At first I wanted to use the algorithm to stretch scroll texts. I dreamed
 of never ending scrollers... In the holidays we wrote a scroll text, but
 the 40KB of text were too much for my little proggy... A shorter text
 would have been too boring for making it endless. But the 40KB slowed my
 Mega Texter down so much, that even the slowest scroll wouldn't get enough
 data to keep on scrolling. It would be no fun to read a scroller which
 scrolles less than one char per second...
 
The Algorithm :
 1) choose a char of the text
 2) use the following chars as search string with a length of <depth> chars
 3) search the text for the string
 4) if this string was found more than one time, choose one of the
    appearances randomly
 5) print the char following the string found in the text
 6) if there is an additional output, put the char out
 7) scroll the search string one step to the left
 8) add the new char at the end of the string
    (the search string has know one char less and a new one, resulting
     in a length of <depth> chars (x+1-1=x))
 9) continue at point 3

Credits :
 The algorithm was invented (or published) by someone writing for Scientific
  American.
 The program was written by Guido Wegener (Wonko the Sane).
 The text used for testing the first version was created by
  Guido Wegener (Wonko the Sane), André Wichmann (Aragorn), Martin Rosenkranz (Rat)
  and Philipp Witkop (Madison), it will be used in Conquest, Aragorn's
  new project (which will never be finished).
 I used the Amiga Reference Manuals and Amiga Intern for getting the
  needed information.

Functions :
 Use the close gadget to exit Mega Texter (all files will be closed).
 The menu :
  Adjustments : This will open a requester with the following gadgets :
                Input file  : Type the path of the source text file here.
                Output file : full path of an optional output file
                              If you want no file-output, use a blank
                              string here.
                              You can also use any device name (like
                              Prt: for output to the printer).
                              All output will still be displayed in the
                              window, too.
                Depth : The length of the search string, explained below.
  Clear display : This will clear the window.
  Quit : Another way to exit Mega Texter.

Needed hardware and software :
 - any Amiga (I hope, how should I test it ?)
 - the normal DOS and Intuition libraries
 - a bit of RAM
 - a text file as input

The input file :
 The input file can be any file, but I think, that it should be a text file
 without huge masses of crazy chars and printer options.
 So please do not use underline, etc. !
 It would be best to use a simple editor (micro emacs or ed).
 The file can then be stored on any device.
 To let Mega Texter know where the input file is, fill in the gadget in
 the adjustments requester with the full path and name.
 For all of you who do not know paths, let me explain it in Workbench
 terms :
  Start with the device name
   DF0: for internal drive
   DF1: for externat drive
   HD0: for your harddisk
   RAM: for the RAM disk
   or use the disk's name.
  After that, list the drawer (directory) names,seperated by /.
  Then give the file name itself.
  Examples :
   RAM:dummytext
   DF0:texts/testtext
   DF0:MegaTexter/MegaTexter.doc
   SaveDisk:selfmade/texts/letter_to_daddy.txt

The output file :
 It is handled like the input file, but you have two more options :
 1) You may give an empty string, to make clear that you do not
    want any additional output.
 2) You may give names of write-only device, like :
    PRT: for the printer
    NIL: for sending it to your ancestors

The depth :
 This is the length of the search string.
 That means that this is the number of characters in the string that
 must be equal to the charakters in the text.
 Use number between 1 and 10 for normal purposes.
 A value of 1 will create really chaotic output, while values greater
 than 10 will give you a nearly identical copy of the input file.
 I use 4 or 5 for short texts and 7 for my mega long text of 40KB.
 PLEASE NOTE : Depth must be smaller than the length of the input file !
 This should normally be true, but some stupid loonies may want to try it.
 I think that my proggy will crash if someone uses such small texts, but
 I see no reason for checking it.

Bugs :
 Yes, there are some bugs in Mega Texter !
 The one I know is this :
 Sometimes the program computes like crazy, but does not print even one
 char. You can re-awake Mega Texter by forcing it to restart the
 algorithm (change the depth).

Some crap about The Tower Of Babel :
 Yesterday I bought a copy of Babel and became a fan of it.
 It is really great !
 But I think that I will have solved all towers soon.
 Who will design new towers for me ??? I do not swap illegal stuff, so
 I will have to ask YOU !
 PLEASE send me a disk with your own towers. I will copy and play them.
 Then I will copy my own towers onto your disk and send it back.
 If you are not the only person who wrote to me, I will also send a
 list of all the other Babel-fans who wrote me.
 Wouldn't it be fun to be a member of a world-wide Tower of Babel club,
 getting new towers every week ?
 Interested ?
 Send your disk and a nice letter to me (Guido Wegener), or include it
 on a sending to CLUSTER.
 Please allow me to copy the towers for others.

Some crap added after some months :
 October just started and Aragorn gave me a disk with some new progs.
 He wants to send it to the PD-people, so he told me to fill the gaps.
 Fred <>< used two of your programs in his library (Pipeline and Blob) !
 Blob is one of my little babies ! (proud father talking ...)
 I am getting famous !!!
 But why didn't he use my other (even better) programs ???
 Was he too blind to notice the gadget in PointerSisters ??
 And why didn't he write back ?
 Und warum bohren wir uns kein Loch ins Knie und gießen Milch hinein ?

 =:^)
 Isn't that a cute face ( better that :-)  ) ? I saw it in Mini Golf !
 But I will continue using my version
   °ª°  °º°  °ª°

Let's all get lame !
          Guido Wegener (Wonko the Sane) of CLUSTER
          
 
CLUSTER is a legal programming formation mainly working on Amiga, coding
Freeware (and perhaps some commercial programs later).
CLUSTER was founded on January 1989 with the following members:
André Wichmann, Guido Wegener, Martin Rosenkranz, Martin Baumann, Philipp
Witkop, Stefan Kaspari, Stefan Lietzow and Giang Nguyen.
Then we reduced our members to the best and got a new programmer.
Now, on 22.7.1990, we have the following members:
André Wichmann          Coding
Guido Wegener           Coding
Martin Mohr             Coding
Martin Rosenkranz       Graphics
Philipp Witkop          Digitizing
If you want to contact any member of CLUSTER (legal !!!) then write to
our address:
             André Wichmann
             Posener Weg 4
             5300 Bonn 1
             West Germany
André will give the letter to the addressed member.

Send errors, corrections, supporting ideas, criticism, enthusiastic fan-
letters,TOWERS and money to the author:       Guido Wegener
                                              Eisenacher Str. 2
                                              5300 Bonn 1
                                              West Germany