Date: 06 Jun 1999 11:41:29 -0500 From: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org> To: Peter Jeremy <jeremyp@gsmx07.alcatel.com.au> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Word processor distractions (was Re: Kernel config script:) Message-ID: <863e05cmdi.fsf@detlev.UUCP> In-Reply-To: Peter Jeremy's message of "Fri, 4 Jun 1999 08:37:34 %2B1000" References: <99Jun4.082139est.40325@border.alcanet.com.au>
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> I've seen references to people writing Towers of Hanoi in troff, but
> I don't have a pointer to the actual code.
Can't help you there, but here's something for you:
/hanoi{/x{{exit}}def /e{exch}def /d{dup}def /l{loop}def /n exch def /m 2 n 1
sub exp cvi def[m{d 0 eq x if d[e d 0{1 add e 2 div cvi d 0 eq x if e}l pop d 1
sub 2 e exp cvi 2 index e sub 1 add e d n e sub 3 1 roll 1 and 0 eq{0 e sub}if
3 mod 3 add 3 mod]e d m ge{{d 1 and 0 eq x if 2 div cvi}l 2 div cvi}{2 mul 1
add{d m and 0 ne x if 2 mul}l}ifelse}l pop]}def
It's an iterative implementation of Towers of Hanoi in PostScript.
I'm quite proud of it, in a twisted sort of way.
If you ever come across that troff code, let me know!
> Of course, it doesn't come close to emacs' capabilities - check out
> 'info emacs Amusements' :-). When running under X, you can play with
> the fonts and colours as well.
There's more than just the docs show. I do suggest looking around in
the Lisp directories now and then; there's lots of stuff that's not
documented, games and otherwise. Have you ever tried M-x tetris?
It's in there, at least as of GNU Emacs 20.3.
I suppose that if we consider Towers of Hanoi to be a useful
distraction, then we'll also add in Life (M-x life) as well; I suspect
that Life distracted Bill Gosper more than Towers of Hanoi has
distracted any single hacker. If you want a bit more modern of a
distraction, a neural net bot that uses landmarks to find the center
of a box is in the 20.3 distribution too; try M-x landmark.
There's also some tools to help you analyze games. For instance, a
mode to help you document decision trees in chess is included; see
/usr/local/share/emacs/20.3/lisp/play/gametree.el. There's also a
mode for helping you with monoalphabetic substitution ciphers that the
games mags love so much has been. It has frequency analysis for
characters and digrams, can bring up adjacency lists, has the ability
to push and pop mappings, and of course keeps your plaintext
up-to-date as you change the mappings. Take a look in decipher.el.
If you're tired of playing with fonts, try something a bit more
substantial: get a handwritten printout of the buffer with M-x
handwrite. Be sure to enable PostScript support on your printer
first if you want a hard copy.
We have the more advanced /usr/games/morse, but Emacs does include M-x
morse-region and M-x unmorse-region for your continued enjoyment.
It's not autoloaded, so do M-x load-library RET morse RET or include
(require 'morse) in your .emacs file first. I've started another
version with prosigns, ISO-8859-1 and KOI8R support, and the ability
to use /dev/speaker, but it's not done yet and may never be.
For those who are into frustration, the peg solitaire game (jump pegs,
try to leave just one) is in M-x solitaire. If you're interested in
that game, then you'll probably also want to look at HAKMEM item 75,
in which Bill Gosper, Steve Brown, and Malcolm Rayfield briefly
analyze the game, and present a winning solution. (Item 76 covers the
triangular Hi-Q game.) If you don't have a copy of HAKMEM, email me
for one.
The Emacs docs discuss Dissociated Press, but don't mention the
StuDlYCApSiFIer, which provides studlify-word, -region, and -buffer.
You'll need to either M-x load-library RET studly RET first, or add
(require 'studly) to your .emacs if you want to use this. Sure to be
a winner for LaTeX fans! :-)
If you want to fnord overload the NSA's email scanners (Just what do
you mean by paranoid?) by randomly including hot words like
Waco, Texas cryptographic Delta Force strategic Panama Rule Psix
security quiche colonel SDI jihad spy AK-47 Treasury terrorist
then try M-x spook. If you prefer to use your own phrase file, then
create a /usr/local/share/emacs/20.3/etc/bruce.lines with
null-terminated strings (use C-q C-@ to insert a NUL), and run
M-x bruce. For instance, if you believe there are CDA scanners that
you want to trigger, then you could fill this data file with George
Carlin's latest list and let 'er rip.
On the other hand, if you're a fan of the CDA, then you may be
concerned your children discovering the existance of the sex(6)
manpage installed in /usr/local/share/emacs/20.3/etc/sex.6 without
your supervision. In this case, you'll want to add
(require 'meese) to your site-init.el file.
Finally, what distraction suite would be complete without the
traditional move-snake-eat-points game? If you're into that sort of
thing, try M-x snake sometime.
Well, I hope I haven't brought FreeBSD development to its knees now by
introducing all these games. I don't think it's coincidence that
everybody who has ported Quake to FreeBSD has been too distracted to
make a port of it.
> Emacs has also had the ability to embed viruses in documents for far
> longer than M$-Word has been around - but the defaults are somewhat
> more sensible and there don't seem to be as many virii floating
> around.
I haven't seen any, have you? The fact that it actually *shows* you
the code before asking for confirmation probably helps, as well as the
fact that anybody can see it in the document.
Cheers,
joelh
--
Joel Ray Holveck - joelh@gnu.org
Fourth law of programming:
Anything that can go wrong wi
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