Lorem Ipsum Generator (lorem)

I once felt a desperate need for a lorem impsum generator (if you do not know what lorem ipsum is see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum ) that runs from the console. When I was unable to find one I had to build it myself.

Download from trunk

The latest version is available here: http://lorem.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/lorem

Examples

Also see the screen shot above - to see what it looks like "for real" [:)]-|--< .

Example 1 - Fifty words

The switch -n is for words and we want fifty of them. So this gives us fifty words.

>lorem -n 50
lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consetetur sadipscing elitr sed diam nonumy eirmod
tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat sed diam voluptua at
vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum stet clita kasd gubergren
no sea takimata sanctus est lorem ipsum dolor sit amet

(Location of line breaks may vary - there are none in the real output.)

Example 2 - Five lines

The switch -l is for lines. The switch -q is for quote index (there are about 13 different sources). Values of -q should be from 0 and up. Too large values result in a text written by me (it is all variations of foobar).

So for five lines from source with index 1 this is what you should write:

>lorem -l 5 -q 1
oh thou in hellas deemed of heavenly birth
muse formed or fabled at the minstrels will
since shamed full oft by later lyres on earth
mine dares not call thee from thy sacred hill
yet there ive wandered by thy vaunted rill

Example 3 - 79 characters

Last switch is -c for characters (spaces count as characters). It can be used like this:

>lorem -c 79 -q 11
me quedo con el transparente hombrecillo que come los huevos de la golondrina m

Please note that piping this to a file results in a file with one more character than you might first expect:

First we create a file with the output from 'lorem -c 15'

>lorem -c 15 > /tmp/lorem15.txt

Next we run the command 'wc' (word count) with the switch -c. This means that characters will be counted

>wc -c  /tmp/lorem15.txt
16 /tmp/lorem15.txt

wc says we have 16 characters - that is annoying. But let us look at the hexdump of it using 'hd':

>hd /tmp/lorem15.txt
00000000  6c 6f 72 65 6d 20 69 70  73 75 6d 20 64 6f 6c 0a  |lorem ipsum dol.|
00000010

As you can see there are 15 characters of lorem and then a new-line character.

Usage and options

Synopsis

lorem [-n|-l|-c] N [-q M]? where N and M are integers

Note

If -n -l and/or -c are combined -l has priority over -c that has priority over -n.

Options

--version	show program's version number and exit
-h, --help	show help message and exit
-n N	Number of Words
-l L	Number of Lines
-c C	Number of Chars
-q Q	Quote index (0+)

Notes

If you are a windows user you might want to rename the file from 'lorem' to 'lorem.py' and you will probably (?) might want to run it with "python lorem.py -n 25" instead of the nix way: "lorem -n 25".

You need python to run it (see http://www.python.org ).