Emacs script for writing in the style of Love 22
Michael D. Ernst <[email protected]>
10/2/1990
last modified 10/18/1990
This file helps you write text in the style of Love 22, a peripatetic jester and perennial presidential candidate (on a platform of "FOOD", "CLOTH", and "RENTS") who looks exactly like Uncle Sam, and dresses the part. He notices words such as "LOVE22" whose letters add up to 22 on the ABC chart.
The ABC Chart
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
In conversations, he points them out in real time, whether he's talking or listening, and in writing he emphasizes them with capitalization and quotation marks, sometimes substituting homonyms to make the addition work out. This program lets you do the same, automatically. The effect can be quite humorous in text -- some people mistake it for Zippification. Try it on some text you have lying around to see the result. (I have my mail-before-send-hook do this automatically on certain mail, depending on the recipient.)
You can get $22 bills, a copy of Love 22's platform, and other fun stuff by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope (with a small donation, if you're feeling generous; I sent $2.22 last time) to
Love 22
PO Box 4022
Key West, FL 33040
Golden Years Assisted Living Community
118 High St
Westerly, RI 02891
The commands of interest are:
show-abc-chart
Displays the ABC chart in the *Help* buffer.
abc-chart-word
Reports the ABC chart value of the word at point.
In Love22 mode, bound to C-x =.
abc-chart-region
Reports the ABC chart value of the current region.
In Love22 mode, bound to M-=.
love22-buffer
Attempts to find words whose ABC chart values are 22 (or its multiples).
Will group words together, substitute homonyms, look for roots of words,
and try various other tricks. The function 22-hook is called on each
such word (or group of words) found; its default action is to upcase the
word(s), surround it by quotes, and change spaces to hyphens if
substitution (e.g. "2" for "too") occurred.
love22-region
Like love22-buffer; acts on the current region (between point and mark).
love22-mode
A minor mode to support writing of Love22 text. Love22 mode causes the
(almost) continual display of the ABC chart value value of the current
word, as well as emphasizing words whose value is a multiple of 22, if
love22-emphasize is non-nil. (This mode's emphasis functionality is
considerably less than that of love22-buffer, but it operates in real
time.)
Don't byte-compile this file; it only works interpreted.
Save love22.el somewhere on your emacs load-path, e.g. ~/.emacs.d .
Add to your .emacs file:
(autoload 'show-abc-chart "love22"
"Show the ABC chart in the *Help* window." t)
(autoload 'abc-chart-word "love22"
"Compute and display the ABC chart value of the word at point." t)
(autoload 'abc-chart-region "love22"
"Compute and display the ABC chart value of the current region." t)
(autoload 'love22-buffer "love22"
"Process a buffer to look like Love22 wrote it." t)
(autoload 'love22-region "love22"
"Process a region to look like Love22 wrote it." t)
(autoload 'love22-mode "love22"
"Minor mode for writing Love22 text." t)
Then restart emacs.
If love22.el is not on your load-path, you may need to specify a full
path for the filename instead of just "love22" (eg ~/emacs/love22, if
~/emacs/ isn't on your load-path but that's where love22.el is).
Now in future editing sessions you'll be ready to use the love22
commands (for instance, M-x love22-region). To use them now, first do
M-x load-file RET love22.el
Changing values in the "Global variables" section modifies the behavior of the program; the experienced user may wish to play with these.
Yes, you could use this as a filter from the command line by running emacs in batch mode. This exercise is left to the reader.
Enjoy!