Trawna Publications Software
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We at Trawna Publications are pleased to announce that we finally have
products! Well, not real products, but at least something we can
give to people. They're still in a very early form, but they are functional,
and we'd like to hear feedback on them.
The first is called WordSmith, and it is used to generate random words.
It does this by examining text files that you provide, determining relative
frequencies of all possible groups of 3 letters, and then generating words
which have the same sorts of frequencies.
There are still enough things to do on the programme that we're not even
making a list yet, but you can try out an early version and let us know what
features you want to see.
It is currently only known to work on Win95/98/NT4.0, although it may work
on other versions of Windows (we'd be interested to hear from anyone who tries).
Best of all, there's no big installation procedure, no big registry changes,
and the executable is under 30K!
Since the programme has no help just yet, here's a quick rundown on how
it works.
- Run the programme. A new document will automatically be created.
- Select Import from the File menu, and choose the text file you want to
use. There are a couple of samples in the download area below. The
document view will not change; this is normal. You may import as many files
as you like; new data will be added to the old. There is not yet any way to
merge two templates.
- There are two squiggly icons on the toolbar (haven't drawn pretty things
yet). The left one will generate a random word, and the right one will
generate a random "sentence" which, for now, is just a few random words strung
together. The word or sentence will be displayed in a dialog box.
- You can save the template made from the text files, and load it back up
later. These templates are currently about 760K, but should be shrinking
soon.
- The programme uses the Multiple Document Interface (MDI), so you can
have several templates on the go at once. Which one is active will determine
which one is used for the random word generation.
- The programme understands a good-sized set of characters, including all
the normal letters, hyphens and apostrophes. It also understands a lot of
the high-ASCII characters in Windows, so that all the various accented
letters are handled. Note that the values for these are different in
Windows than they are in DOS. There will be a list of these available in
the programme sometime soon.
- Note that the programme's not too bright about figuring out whether an
apostrophe or hyphen is part of the word or not; it just always assumes it
is. Make sure that your text uses double-quotes instead of apostrophes for
marking off quotations, and put spaces before and after all hyphens that are
not part of words, and you'll be okay.
[ Go to the download area ]
The second is called CharMaker, and it is intended to assist people in making
characters for the Infinite Horizons RPG,
freely available elsewhere on this web site. If you're not familiar with the
game, this will not likely be of any use to you, as it is very game-specific.
Currently, it automates the hard math part of character creation. There
are three (so far) races to select from in the drop down box (todo #1: read
the race data from a text file). You can then twiddle the various attributes
up and down to your heart's content, without ever needing a calculator.
Later versions will incorporate all facets of character creation, including
skill selection, commitment ratings, training, equipment, character sheet
printing, and saving and loading characters for later modifications. But
it's useful enough as it is that we thought we'd let you play with it.
It will probably only run on Win95/98/NT4.0, although it may work on other
versions of Windows (we'd be interested to hear from anyone who tries).
As with WordSmith, there's no big installation procedure or registry changes.
Just get the executable (under 20K) and run it!
The main things are the WordSmith and
CharMaker executables. You may also need some
updated DLLs (1.1Mb; get these only if the programme
doesn't run). There are also a couple of sample text files for WordSmith
here:
- A comprehensive list of English words (1.3Mb) available either
zipped or gzipped (both
360K after compression). This can produce very strange looking results, and
I'm going to see if trimming out some of the technical terms helps.
- A list of 126 Olde English names gleaned
from Beowulf and other sources. A lot of the words generated by this begin
with "He" or "Hr", but that's because a lot of the words in the list do.
- I tried generating words based on Jabberwocky, but it just didn't work
well, so that file is not here.
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