Flash widget
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- Anders
I had this idea about a flash widget that imports txt and converts each letter of the alphabet to a color. I would like it to work as a form of translator, so that you can import all kinds of different texts and study the converted output. Anyone up for it. Would just like to see it done.
- MX_OnD0
would this be for english texts (ie texts with a 26 character base)??
sounds interesting!
- useful_idiot0
so you could only have 26 colors? Well, I suppose you could include all of the other textual outputs: !@#$%^&*( )
- Anders0
It depends on how difficult it would be to create. It would be great if special characters had a color-coding too.
I would love to see what the output from such a widget when you run chapters from all the great books through it.
- MX_OnD0
in essence it wouldn't be too tricky.. you'd just have two arrays one listing the characters and one listing the colours then "translate" one into the other (ie character1 = colour1 etc...) The obvious method would then involve attaching (or creating) a 1 pixel MovieClip with the relevant colour to an output area....
Displaying the results could become tricky though due to the maximum amount of MovieClips allowed by the FlashPlayer (16'000) This would restrict the output area to say 40 x 400 pixels (well less really because you'd already use up a number of MovieClips without the attached or created ones)
It is an interesting idea to toy with though!!
- MX_OnD0
anders, you have mail!
- 4cY0
please, don't make it a private mail issue now.. as i am curious too!
i was wondering: would you work from on end of the spectrum to the other? as in: A would be red and Z would be blue/violet? i was thinking that ;,.:?! etc. could be grayscales, that way it would show to what degree of complexity the sentences are built.
hmm.. just a thought tho.
- ilmarine0
no way. from red to blue ( with A being red and Z being blue) would just be a gradient. it wouldn't show you anything about the text. you should rather base the coloring on a great theory.
for example:
there is this poe's short story where a very important part id played by a coded text/message. the decoding wokrs on the lines of amount of usages of characters in english language. if i'm not mistaken e or a was the most used. so, in that code the most used symbol has to be e or a and so forth. so, if we gave the most used character the value of red and the least used character the value of blue, we should be able to find out the level of difficutly of the text. also, if janne's idea of using grayscale for symbols would be used it would give us another way of measuring the difficulty.
of course, this is not the only way to colorcode the letters but i strongly suggest you to think on this or something like this. otherwise it would just be an art project.
p.s. the poe's story had something to do with pirates, treasures and some green (?) bugs.
- 4cY0
i had not read your whole reply yet, ilmarine, as a client/friend dropped in.
but how would my proposed colour become a gradient?
i will read your idea in a few.
;)
- plamenski0
Sometime ago, I played with something similar:
http://www.olbindesign.com/fairy…Type in your name in the box and click on the duck. No letters.
It's not finished though.
- MX_OnD0
the only way it would become a gradient is if you were to type:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz......
besides I convert the letters to Charactercode and then pass this code to a function which spits hex colourcode back and that function doesn't (as yet) assign colours from red to blue or from any one colour to another because the Charactercodes aren't linear either....
- ilmarine0
yep sorry cy, my mistake. i'm so down to gradients now that if you give me two colors i can only picture them as one.
however, even if you do give a different color for each different letter then the outcome would just be a mosaic of colors. a riot of colors, even.
i still think it would be a good idea to have some sort of system. and think of the one i proposed - it starts to sound more and more scientific. cnn headline a year from now "scientists find that "ulysses" is the most difficult book".
- ilmarine0
mx - i see that you have a point. but it would still be just a colorful pattern. maybe it's just me, but i would like to see some sort of a point even behind art projects.
- MX_OnD0
ilmarine, I see your point too, at first I decided to try it as a little challenge to occupy a couple of hours....
While doing it I realised that there are some applications for something like this too....
"secret messaging" being the obvious one... reconverting the colours into text is nigh impossible with Flash though....
- ilmarine0
it wouldn't be with some php or something suchlike. just add the colorvalue as text/variable to each movieclip. hell, this way it's even possible with flash.
oh, and one could create different coding keys with this aplication ;)
- frankbb0
right i have something here, very early in development.. what it does is it splits a body of text in to triplets. each letter is worth a value. a = 0, b= 1 and so on..
the first letter of the triplet is the r value, the second is the g value and the third the b value.. each one is times by ten at them moment, because i don't take in to account capitals, this would give more values to pic from..
so...
- frankbb0
url.
http://www.fluidesign.co.uk/deve…
also, has anybody see a bit of flash that strips a space for a piece of text.. dynamically??
- frankbb0
update.. enter your own text.. no spaces.. as i haven't done a script to remove spaces
- frankbb0
actually it should be fine if you put spaces in it.. it seems ok ish..
- 4cY0
very nice, frankbb! now we are getting somewhere.
- ilmarine0
i can't deny that the idea - despite all the bugs - is nice (as is the outcome). however, i still think that this classifies (merely) as art with a fancy background story.
sorry...