Good news, everyone!
Thanks to the power of modern computers we can now easily transcribe our Earthican language into Alien Alphabet 1 (AA1) and Alien Alphabet 2 (AA2) from Futurama!
AA1 is a simple substitution cipher. AA2 is a bit more complex, but it does not have all the characters from AA1. You can find more information here:
You can find the source code here as a .tgz archive or as a .zip archive
The code is written in platform independent C, so you should be able to compile it by typing make
on the command prompt if
you're using Linux. It also works if you use MinGW on Windows.
While the program may seem a bit pointless if you're a serious programmer, it does have some technical features that are worth mentioning:
struct bitmap
.
struct bitmap
and to blit between struct bitmap
objects.
The program can be run from the shell as follows:
usage: ./xlator [options] (-t "string" | infile) where options are a combination of: -t string Translate the string, otherwise infile must be given -1 Use Alien Language One (Default) -2 Use Alien Language Two -o outfile Specifies the output file, default output.bmp -f RRGGBB Specifies the foreground colour, default FFFFFF -b RRGGBB Specifies the background colour, default 000000 Colours are specified in hexadecimal, eg FF00FF -d Outputs the cipher instead of translating the string -s size Resizes the image to 'size' times -M Disables smoothing on the output -v Enables verbose mode -h Displays the help message