AlteString
Help
24 March 2005
(c) Avocado Software
Program's website
AlteString is meant to be the least useful program in the world. However, it has some functionality :) This application can namely perform a so called 'transformation' on given string. There are few builtin transformations included and the result varies because of choosing them - that's quite obvious.
Whole program fits into his main window which is shown below:
Upper part of the window is a text field where you can enter text you wish to transform.
In the middle part ypu choose the type of transformation you want to perform. There are grouped in categories to avoid chaos, so firstly you pick a category from the left combobox and then the specific transformation from the right one. Below combos we have intensity trackbar, it is used in some transformation to adjust its intensity (it means "how much" the text is transformed). The scale and meaning of intensity depends on particular transformation.
After clicking Transform the text will be pushed trough transformation and so altered version will be shown in box below. You can for example copy it to clipboard (place cursor, Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+C to copy) or save to file via context menu.
Context menu is displayed after right-clicking with the mouse in upper or lower textbox. It consists of few options:
- Load input from file... opens a dialog allowing you to choose a text file which input for the program will be read from
- Save output to file... lets you save transformated text into file
- Transform clipbaord puts clipboard contents (if it's plain text) as program input and immediately transforms it using current method
In this version available includes (described with their categories):
- Funny groups transformations with no particular purpose - except of entertaining the user ;)
- Pokemonize produces text with 'pokemons' - randomly upper- and lowercased letters. Such a "cute" effect is significantly often seen in blogs so their authors will be satisfied with this transformation :) Intensity controlls how many letters will have randomized case - that means, how much pokemonized the text will be
- Basic Hackerize alters the text so that it looks like being written by a 'haxxor'. Basically it puts digit instead of some letters the are similar to. The amount of switched letters depends on intensity (maximum causes that all possible letters are changed)
- Advanced Hackerize works like the Basic version but it also adds letters' uppercasing starting from the end of the word. Intensity decides how large part of the word is u-cased but first letter is always lowercased. Don't ask why, it's just haxxor's logic ;)
- l33t Hackerize works mainly like the Advanced one but it has few additional non letter-to-digit switches. For example, it changes X into >< and D into |>. With 100% intensity transformed text is therefore almost completely unreadable - of course if you are not a l33t haxxor ;>
- Crypto has transformations somehow related with cryptography or - in more general sense - making the text difficult to decipher
- ROT13 is a very simple crypto algorithm. It shifts letters by 13 positions in latin alfabet, wrraping from Z to A if neccessary. Non-letter characters are unchanged. Decoding text is done the same way as encoding: transforming the encoded text again will simply decode it. ROT13 is used sometimes in emails and Usenet messages. Truly said this transformation is by now the only useful feature of AlteString :D
- Legibly Anagramize is a very interesting transformation. It randomizes order of characters in words - all characters except of first and last one. Scientists proves that such an anagramization still allows to read the text. The magic is in that people doesn't concentrate on letters but on whole words Smart', isn't it? :) You can check it for yourself. Effect strongly depends on intensity: the higher it is, the more randomized letters program will produce
- Reverse Words flips order of words in text but retaining order of letters in words. Intenisty has nothing to do with this transformation
- Reverse Letters writes words backward but doesn't touch order of words
- Reverse All is a combination of above two. Simple saying, it writes given text backwards
More information and new versions can be found on application's website.