ANNOUNCEMENT ----------- semi-prospectus I have now completed most of the design, and most of the interface, but none of the cutup code, for the new burroughsizer program. I will describe the process briefly here, and send copies to those who request, in hopes that they will return comments. The program runs in hypercard. There are three stages to the cutup process: input extraction, scrambling, and output stuffing. Either one or two documents may be selected as input. Each document may be selected as cut by whole page, quarter page, or diagonal quarter page. The sections of all selected documents may be rearranged with clicks. An option-click will cause the section to be inverted by line when it is extracted. The result of the first stage is a stream of text, consisting of the extracted text in the order given by the user. That is, if there is one document which appears as follows in the interface: +---+---+ + + + + 4 + 2 + + + + +---+---+ + + + + 3 + 1 + + + + +---+---+ This means that the resulting text stream will consist of text from the bottom right corner followed by text from the upper right corner followed by lower left and upper right. (If two documents are selected the sections may be interleaved or not.) The user may also indicate page size and a few other parameters such as whether words may be split or not. Even though the text(s) have been reduced to a text stream, a traditional cutup may be produced if, in the output step, the text is reinserted into a page cut-up by the same style (quarters -> quarters). A traditional burroughs cutup would look like this: +---+---+ +---+---+ + + + + + + + 1 + 2 + + 4 + 2 + + + + + + + +---+---+ --> +---+---+ + + + + + + + 3 + 4 + + 3 + 1 + + + + + + + +---+---+ +---+---+ HOWEVER, one may insert the quarters-cut page into a diagonals-cut page, or even just take the text from there and output it. (And other combinations, of course.) In betweent the input and output is an optional scramble stage. This will correspond to the old burroughsizer program, which rearranged lines in a text to random points within a given radius of their original position. Please mail me if you want either the old burroughsizer (which is written in REXX) or the new incomplete burroughsizer. I would appreciate comments/requests on the design of the system. I've tried to think of all the things I'd want from a cutup program, but no doubt I've left out some obvious things. -jeremy