Fresh Fish 5/FreshFish_July-August1994.bin/bbs/util/klingnum-1.1.lha/KlingNum-1.1/KlingNum.DOC

Text File | 1994-07-03 | 10.6 KB | 189 lines

KlingNum v1.1
Written in 1994 by Sean Martin Newton; placed in the Public Domain.

KLINGNUM STARTED ON THE AMIGA.  IF THIS ARCHIVE IS USED ON A PC,
THAT'S COOL.  BUT BE ADVISED THAT THIS DOCUMENT WILL REFER TO AMIGA
TERMS; I'LL TRY TO CONSIDER PC USERS HERE AND THERE, BUT IT'LL BE
PRIMARILY AMIGA.

What does this program do?

It converts decimal numbers that you give it into longhand Klingon.
The English equivalent would be a program that, when you give it 531,
returns "five hundred and thirty-one".  The source I used for my
numbering-system data only included the suffixes for numbers up into
the millions range, so the highest number it can translate into
Klingon is 9,999,999 - it also can't translate decimals, as those
weren't covered in the Klingon Dictionary either.  In everyday use
(DOES this program have an everyday use???), it's not likely that
you'll find this a problem.

Please note that the Klingon language is probably copyrighted by
Paramount or somebody like that, so I don't recommend that anyone
improve this program to the max, then try to get ShareWare donations
out of it - from what I've seen in the docs for other Star Trek
related software, they don't take kindly to that.  However, I haven't
seen any problems for non-profit authors, so this program is
thoroughly PD.  Do what you want with it; I'd APPRECIATE it if you
left this doc file in, left my original KlingNum message as intact as
possible if you change it, and documented any and all changes that you
make to KlingNum - but if you don't, I'm not going after you with a
shotgun or anything.  Anybody Klingon enough to want this program
should have an equally Klingon sense of honor, and this is what I
appeal to when I ask that you not file off my name and put your own in
its place - ADDING, no prob.  Removing any reference to the original
author, that's a bit annoying.

Anyway: Everybody and their brother, feel free to change the code or
whatever.  If you manage to kill your system or shred your hard drive
with it, I'm not going to be held liable for it.  You can read the
code; it's 'C', and the original version was compiled on SAS/C 6.51 (I
LOVE upgrade patches!!!) and doesn't use any I/O except for the
standard input/output streams.  So if you decide to re-direct your
output stream from KlingNum and accidentally overwrite your $5 billion
80-gigabyte database of ice cream shops in the Timbuktu area, or do
something especially nasty to a network, I'm not taking responsibility
for it.  If it's got weird file manipulations, then the source has
been changed and you should go after the modifying people.  But don't
take this to mean I won't be unsympathetic - if you blow up your
80-gig database, I'm sorry.  But since there's no way this program
*alone* can do it, I'm not taking responsibility.  Re-directing your
output so it blows up the database is something that your operating
system would actually be doing, and all KlingNum would be doing is
sending data to the standard output stream - it doesn't know or care
where the operating system is going to send it.  Bottom line: EVEN IF,
BY SOME ABSOLUTELY IMPROBABLE CHANCE, YOU FIND A WAY TO KILL YOUR
COMPUTER OR DELETE ITS FILES BY USING THIS PROGRAM, I'M NOT TAKING THE
BLAME FOR IT!  It would take a LOT of effort to find a way to blow up
a computer with this program, and if you can figure out a way to do
it, more power to you, but don't think for a second that I'm
responsible for it.

Now that the obligatory legalistic rudeness is over, here's the stuff
you're reading this file for.  The way to call up KlingNum is with:
KlingNum <Number>, where Number is the decimal value you'd like to
have converted into longhand Klingon.  Say, for instance, you wanted
to find out what the Klingon number 56 is.  "KlingNum 56" would result
in "vaghmaH jav" being displayed right under the command.  Sorry, but
it can't translate decimals (6.5, etc.); they weren't covered in my
reference material.  It also doesn't handle numbers greater than
9,999,999, because the positional suffixes only went up to 1 million.

Note that there is formatting attached to the Klingon output; that's
because some people might want to do nifty things with
output-redirection and script files (batch files, for IBMers).  Check
the bottom of this document for ways to do weird things like
displaying your available memory in Klingon.  IBM users, good luck...
I use and program IBMs, but I don't enjoy 'em.  They have such
limitations built in at the hardware level that they act like bogus
systems from the '60s and '70s!  The operating systems they use do
nothing but compound and magnify those limitations.

If you've got InterNet access, feel free to drop me a piece of E-Mail;
my address is [e-mail].  If you want to talk about
improvements, discuss Star Trek in general, or dispute my vehement
assaults on the cornerstones of IBM lunacy, feel free to drop me a
line.  If you know what the InterNet address of the Klingon newsgroup
is, please let me know; I've been trying to find it without any
success whatsoever.  By the way, don't bother writing messages to me
in Klingon; even though I've written a Klingon number translator, I
can't read the language well enough (YET!)  to understand complete
messages in it.  I know some people can, and I heartily commend them
for it, but sending an all-Klingon message to me would just be a waste
of your time.  A phrase here and there is fine, though; I can look it
up and get some practice reading Klingon.  By the way, if you're an
Amiga user looking for Star Trek files (programs, images, sound files,
etcetera), I can tell you some file locations on FTP sites; I keep a
record of what I run across, so if there's an Amiga Star Trek game out
there, I probably know where to find it.

I realize I haven't done a very good job of commenting KlingNum, but
it would be nice to know what has been changed without digging through
old source.  If you make changes, please comment them so the next
person can see what all's been done..  And hey, if you compile the
source on a different platform, please send me a piece of E-Mail just
so I can update my list of how many systems KlingNum has been spread
to.  Just let me know of any changes you had to make in order to get
it working on those other platforms - I know VAX/VMS would probably
need to dump the command-line processing so that it can prompt for a
number, for instance.  I'm not going to pretend KlingNum couldn't use
improvement; for instance, enhanced error checking would be nice.  I
don't have any kind of ego problem about this program; if you make an
improvement and toss half my code, that's fine.  One final note: even
if you make spectacular, ground-breaking changes to this, if you add
Klingon ships flying around and zapping each other with phasers and
making sound effects, I wouldn't recommend that you try to make
ShareWare out of it.  Paramount, which owns Star Trek (and probably
the Klingon language as well, which is why I haven't said a word about
how Klingon numbers are formed) seems to have this thing for
prosecution, and a ShareWare authors have been pestered by them in the
past.  As long as it's free, though, you're probably in the clear.
Matter of fact, with the way I've written this utility, it could
really be thought of as a specialized utility for people who've
already BOUGHT "The Klingon Dictionary", since you really should
understand Klingon numbers before you go trying to read them.

By the way, the book I referred to is "The Klingon Dictionary", by
Marc Okrand.  It's a great book, and Mr. Okrand should be highly
commended for boldly pulling the Klingon language out of the Final
Frontier and into a readable book.  I just wish the section on Klingon
numerals went into trillions, and had decimal notation (you know,
6.75, etc.) somewhere... although that will probably be solved with
the Klingon Encyclopedia, which will cover a whole lot of stuff in
great depth.

About the Author:

Whoopty do, my autobiography.  Hey, everybody adds something like this
at the end of the text file, so I might as well do the same.  As you
already know by reading the rest of the document, I'm an outspoken
Amiga user who loves to give IBMers an earfull on why their systems
are ridiculously inefficient and generally useless.  Currently, I'm in
college, working on a Computer Science degree, and my goal in life is
to write Amiga productivity programs.  I've had it with people
complaining about the lack of business software, and since I feel that
anyone who complains had better be prepared to do something about it,
I'm going to try my best to quiet the complainers.  If you either need
or are using productivity software on Amigas, let me know what kind of
things you use, and what you really wish you had, so that I will know
what kind of things I need to look into.  And hey, if you need a small
CLI utility written, I might be able to oblige you on that mark.
Another of my interests is writing SAS/C equivalents to the Borland
(BLEAH!) include files, so that Amigites using REAL compilers with
REAL editors on REAL computers can write BOGUS programs that are
source-compatible with BOGUS systems and thus can do their work at
home when their professors decide that it's such a FUN idea to write
something that REQUIRES Borland to compile!!!  It stinks!  It needs to
be stopped!  If anybody has similar concerns, E-Mail me and maybe we
can get a lot of this kind of IBM-specific nonsense eliminated.

And now, as promised: AN ACTUAL USE FOR KLINGNUM!!!  The following
three lines are a script; I recommend you call this script "Kmem"
(Klingon Mem) for consistency.

AVAIL TOTAL >ENV:FREEMEM
Echo "Memory: `KlingNum $FREEMEM` ($FREEMEM)"
DELETE >NIL: ENV:FREEMEM

Note that the "`"s are the "`"s located on the Tilde (~) key; if you
use the other one that looks similar ("'"), the script won't display
the Klingon number.  Note that this script won't show your free memory
if you've got 10M or more of free RAM, since it can't translate
numbers >=10,000,000.  Boy, it must be nice to run into THAT problem!
:) By the way, Kmem is included in the original archive, so you might
not have to type it in after all!  Just copy it to S: and type Kmem
whenever (under 1.3+).  If you type it in, be sure to go "PROTECT Kmem
+S" on the command line, to make sure that AmigaDOS knows it's a
script file and will run it without the EXECUTE command.  On 1.2 or
below, I think you'll have to type "EXECUTE Kmem" or set up an alias
to do so.  Since I know of few people still using 1.2, this isn't a
big deal.

Version History:
  KlingNum v1.1 -  6 June  1994.
    Fixed an enforcer hit occurring when no arguments are given, pointed
    out by Michael Pins, in charge of Amiga PD on GRIND.ISCA.UIOWA.EDU.
  KlingNum v1.0 - 28 April 1994.

yIntIQej'chep - Live Long & Prosper.