PROVERBS

Rearrange proverbs into new, mostly senseless, proverbs.

Sprichwörter is the German name for the same program.

Synopsis

proverbs

proverbs -[qc <COLOR>] (--qualify --color <COLOR>)

proverbs -f (--favorites)

proverbs -a (--add)

proverbs -h (--help)

proverbs -v (--version)

DESCRIPTION

The program combines the beginnings and the endings of proverbs randomly picked from a list. The result is a phrase which is still recognizable as "kind of a proverb" but without claiming to convey any real message, let alone "wisdom".

Yes. It is intended as a humorous waste of time. You can, for example, call proverbs from your .bashrc file.

When called on the command-prompt as proverbs without any options, a newly generated proverb will be printed out on screen.

OPTIONS

-a or --add
Allows you to add a new, real proverb to the list of original proverbs. You are prompted for each of the details: language (one of en or de at the time of this writing), singular or plural (s, p), beginning and ending of the proverb.
-f or --favorites
Will dump the list of "qualified", random proverbs, i.e. those that had been found worth saving after a previous call to proverbs.
-q or --qualify
After a newly created proverb has been presented, you have a few seconds to eventually qualify a proverb, i.e. add it to the list of favorites, by pushing '+'.
-c or --color=COLOR
Sets the color the border which sourrounds a generated proverb. Must be one of red, green, yellow, purple, cyan, blue, white or black.
-h or --help
Shows the short help-text for the program.
-v or --version
Shows version-information

ADDING PROVERBS to the default list (option -a or --add)

At the time of this writing (october 2019), original ('real') proverbs must conform to the pattern

"someone or something" | "does or is something"

Just execute the program a few times on the command-line, without arguments, to get the idea.

For the time, original proverbs are grouped with respect to their subject (someone or something), which is uncountable or in singular for the first group (like in “Fortune | favors the bold”), in plural for the second group (like in “All Roads | lead to Rome”).

FILES

The hidden directory .proverbs in the user's home-directory can contain three types of file. For the English version, these are:

liste_en.rb
This file contains all the currently available, original proverbs. It exists only, if you have already added new original proverbs.
liste_en_bak.rb
A backup-copy of the previous version of the list of proverbs.
qualifile_en
This file contains the list of previously qualified, randomly generated proverbs, i.e. the list of favorites. It is created when you qualify a proverb for the very first time, and dumped to screen, when you use the option -f or --favorites.

OTHER INFORMATION

Source-code:"Proverbs" had been developed in Ruby and is distributed as a ruby-gem. If you installed the program from the gem-file (with gem install), then you find all the source-files in the gem-folder for your Ruby-version. Otherwise, you can also unpack the gem-file (with tar), then uncompress the data-archive and take a look at the files in the resulting, new folders bin and lib.
License:"Proverbs" is released under the conditions of the GNU General Public License, version 3.0.
Version:1.6 of 2019/10/15
Author:"Proverbs" has been programmed by Michael Uplawski <michael.uplawski@uplawski.eu>. The German parlor game "Verrückte Sprichwörter" ("Crazy Proverbs") was the principal inspiration for the project.

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