The JanusNode environment includes several buttons and menus which can be used to control different aspects of its function. In this section they are explained.
What do the four buttons in the JanusNode environment do?
(1) The 'Help' Button
The craftily-named 'help' button doesn't really help you all that much. If you bother to click on it, you will be informed that help files are now in HTML format. If you are reading this, you found your way there, one way or another. All of the documentation in the help files which are distributed with your JanusNode will be mirrored (and kept updated) at Janus's website.
(2) The 'Control Panel' Button
The control panel button is much less confusing than the help button, insofar as clicking on it does indeed take you to the control panel. The control panel allows you to control different aspects of a JanusNode's functioning. The control panel contains its own help, which describes its features. The control panel help is appended at the end of this page.
(3) The 'Janus' and 'Generate/Morph' (mode-switch) Buttons
The 'Janus' button (circled in red above) sets your JanusNode to manufacturing new texts, or morphing new texts, depending on the status of the mode switch to the left (circled in green above). The 'Janus' button also has a menu ('Do it' in the 'Janus' menu) and command-key equivalent (command-T) .
Exactly what is done when you 'do it' depends on the state of the mode-switch and the pop-up menu buttons on top of the main JanusNode window. Separate sections of this document explain the text-generation mode and the text-morphing mode.
The 'Search' Button & Menu
The 'Search' button allows you to search the current field for a substring. If the string is found, it will be highlighted. Use the commands in the Edit menu (or their command-key equivalents) to repeat the search, or to do a global search-and-replace on the current field.
Menu Items
The 'Read' command
The 'Read' command will make JanusNode read out any text in the JanusNode window. You need to have the necessary system software installed for this to work. You can configure some aspects of speech in the control panel.
The 'Performance Read'
command
This will make your JanusNode read the text in the JanusNode window using its dual-channel Performance Reading mode. You need to have the necessary system software installed for this to work. The Performance Reading mode works in a deterministic (but bizarre) manner based on the text it is reading and the voices you happen to have installed in your system. The structure of the first few words of each clause specifies the voice, speed, and pitch which will be used to read that clause.
The 'Set Field Font' Command
This allows you to change the default font of the output field, rather than simply changing the font of the currently-visible text.
The 'Open File' and 'Save File' Commands
These are the standard commands for reading and writing files. JanusNode can read and write plain text files only.
The 'Remove Duplicates' Command
This command will only work when the visible field is a word-type field. It will scan the field and remove all duplicated words in the visible word-type field.
The 'Do It' Command
Choosing 'Do it' is equivalent to clicking on the Janus button in the main window. Its purpose is simply to allow keyboard control of JanusNode's text-generation and text-morphing functions.
The control panel allows you to set various parameters which control how your JanusNode works.
The 'File Text' checkbox
lets you toggle on and off tools which exist for saving good lines
in an accessible and orderly fashion. If the 'File Text' box is
checked, then all you need to do is select some desired text in
the JanusNode field and move the cursor on to the field (you may
have to move it off first). Your JanusNode will ask if you want
to save the text. If you indicate that you do, then the text will
be time- and date-stamped, and stored in the field called 'saved',
which is accessible (as are all fields) from the pop-up menu above.
If the 'Append' checkbox is checked, your JanusNode will append newly-generated text to the end of the current text instead. If it is not checked, the the output window window will be cleared (and its contents lost forever) before generating any new text.
The Font-o-matic tools determine whether or not your robot will randomly vary its fonts and/or styles when generating text. If the button is off, then there will be no random variation. If it is on, then the flip-switch at the right of the on-switch determines whether both fonts and styles will be varied, or just fonts. The field below the font-o-matic controls determines which fonts will be used for random font variation: you can add or delete fonts using the appropriate buttons.
The Type-o-matic tools control a type-writer emulation mode for those who desire the old sounds of creative literary inspiration during text generation.
The Vox-o-matic tools allow you to choose a single voice for reciting the JanusNode's output. If vox-o-matic is not on, then a voice will be chosen randomly. If it is on, then the voice whose name is written in bold will be used. You can select which voice you want to use by clicking on it. If there are no choices, you have no voices in your system folder and cannot use speech. Janus highly recommends the use of Apple's voice 'Good News', which is an ideal voice for playing back the high-quality gibberish generated by a JanusNode's text degeneration features.
The 'Set Subjects' button allows you to change the default subject. This is really obselete, as there are many better ways of doing this- read the documentation.
The 'Reset Globals' button will randomly reset the values of the global variables which are randomly generated at start-up time.
The 'Define constant' button allows you to define a constant from any of the BrainFood fields. You need to read the documentation if you want to know what this means. This is also obselete, as there are many better ways of doing this.
The 'Silence' button will gag some of the run-time noises if it is checked.
The 'Capitalize' button toggles the JanusNode's auto-capitalization function. If it is checked, your robot will automatically capitalize the first word of any new sentence which it recognizes as a new sentence.
The 'Alliterate' button will turn on the alliteration feature. Not every field has words beginning with every letter (try writing a poem using only word starting with Z!). If there is no appropriate word when alliteration is turned on, then the robot will simply substitute an appropriate word that begins with a different letter.
The 'Not English' check box exists in order to allow non-English users to use JanusNodes, so that no one need be deprived of their joys. It turns off the automatic addition of 'n' to 'a' if it comes before a vowel. Some languages need to be able to use the word 'a' for other purposes.
The 'Auto-space' check box determines whether a random number of spaces will be inserted before each new line. If it is checked (the setting intended for free verse) then the spaces will be inserted. If it is not checked (intended for prose generation), then no spaces will be inserted.
The Arrow button takes you back to the main text-generation deck.