newtopia introduces . . .

Positronic Poetry v0.8b
2.11.99 

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Introduction

Positronic Poetry is a Newtonized version of the
magnetic poetry I've always been too cheap to buy for my
fridge.  Select a word source, and Positronic Poetry
scatters a slew of words around the screen for you to drag
and drop at your muse's whim.  Poetry has never been so
nerdy.

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Features

Positronic Poetry contains no words of its own.  Instead,
it depends on Positronic Poetry parts -- Newton extensions
that contain a range of words.  Five such parts are
included with this distribution: Brooks, Dickinson,
Ferlinghetti, Heaney, and Lorde.  Each contains a sampling
of words that struck us as represenative of our five
favorite poets.  New Positronic Poetry Parts are easy for
anyone with a copy of NTK to create.  (I'll try to put
together an API soon.)

Once you've installed Positronic Poetry and a part or two
(or five), launch the package and tap "New."  You'll see a
pop-up menu containing the names of all installed parts,
plus three additional selections: "potluck," "shuffle," and
"clear."

Tap the name of a part to generate a random sampling of
words from that part.

Tap "potluck" to use words picked at random from your Newton
device's built-in dictionary.

Tap "shuffle" to shuffle the words currently on screen.

Tap "clear" to clear the screen entirely.

You can adjust the number of words that are generated by
tapping the "i" button and selecting "Prefs."  You will see
three sliders:

o  "poet's words" refers to the words unique to a given part
o  "common words" refers to common pronouns, verbs, adverbs,
prepositions, and conjunctions
o  "articles and endings" refers to "a," "an," "the," "s,"
"er," and the like

You can also add your own words by selecting words in other
Newton applications, dragging them to either side of your
Newton device's screen (the clipboard), and then dragging
them from the clipboard onto the Positronic Poetry screen.
(This hasn't worked so hot on certain Newton devices, but it
sure works smashingly on mine.)  By the same token, you can
remove words by dragging them to the clipboard.

Later I'll work on a way to save poems, either within
Positronic Poetry itself or as an export to the Notes
application.

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Thank the Author

Positronic Poetry is free, and is admittedly not yet a
finished product.  But if you'd like to do something nice
for the author, please consider sending him a postcard from
your hometown.  His current address is in the Newton section
of the Newtopia web site:

http://www.newtopia.com

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michael pohl
michael@newtopia.com
http://www.newtopia.com/