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Idiot Randomizer Read Me
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1993-03-02
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RELEASE NOTES FOR IDIOT RANDOMIZER
This is a utility of the 'one dumb job' variety. It does one job, and
does it fast and with minimal hoorah.
Idiot Randomizer is SYSTEM 7 _MOSTLY_. Its normal interface is Drag
and Drop, so you are best off not using it with earlier Systems.
But: this is being written to solve a particular problem, and I don't
know the configuration of the person with the emergency, so I built
in one very stupid fall-back mechanism that makes it possible to use
Idiot Randomizer in a crippled way with System 6. See the work-around
described below. If you double-click on it from a System 6 machine
and you _haven't_ used the work-around, you will get an error message
and the software will quit gracefully.
To use Idiot Randomizer _with_ System 7, simply select the files you
want to randomize and drag them on the program's icon or an alias of
it. New files will be created, and your original source files will
remain unaltered.
The new files Idiot Randomizer creates will have a random number
prepended to each line, there to serve as a sort key for randomizing
the sequence of the lines. IOW, if you have a well-ordered file, and
you want it to be recast in random order, this software will perform
a vital step in the process.
General procedure to achieve randomization:
1. Run Idiot Randomizer on your file(s).
2. Open the newly created file(s) in Word (or any other software that
supports paragraph-by-paragraph sorting) and sort. The sort key
prepended by Idiot Randomizer will cause the text to sort in random
order.
3. Save the file(s) as Text Only.
4. Run the Torquemada set named "Lose Sort Key" included in the
archive on the sorted files. This (1.1.0-compatible) set will simply
delete the sort key added by Idiot Randomizer.
5. Gloss and toss with the new files created by Torquemada.
System 6 work-around...
If you really need this idiot randomization, and if you are still
running System 6, you can do this: name your file "Randomize Me"
(_exactly_, and omitting the double quotes). Put it in the same
folder as Idiot Randomizer and double click on the Idiot Randomizer
icon. Normally, Idiot Randomizer would display its non-7 error
message, but if it sees a file with that particular name, it will cut
you a break and make a new file with a creator type of '????'. Follow
the above procedure for steps 2 - 5. Not that you can only do one
file at a time by this means, since the file name "Randomize Me" is
hard-coded.
Greg Swann
12/2/92