-[[!meta title="Random Zsigs for Barnowl"]]
+[[!meta title="Random Zsigs for BarnOwl"]]
-# Random Zsigs for Barnowl
+## Random Zsigs for BarnOwl
-First off, if you haven't already, take a look at Barnowl's internal documentation. Try the following two commands.
+Note: There's a lot of background information in here which can be bypassed.
+
+First off, if you haven't already, take a look at BarnOwl's internal documentation. Try the following two commands.
:help
:show quickstart
-(Also viewable outside of Barnowl, in the form of messier-to-read source code, at [/help.c - barnowl - Trac](http://barnowl.mit.edu/browser/help.c) and the "intro" file at [/docs/intro.txt - barnowl - Trac](http://barnowl.mit.edu/browser/doc/intro.txt),
+(Also viewable outside of BarnOwl, in the form of messier-to-read source code, at [/help.c - BarnOwl - Trac](http://barnowl.mit.edu/browser/help.c) and the "intro" file at [/docs/intro.txt - BarnOwl - Trac](http://barnowl.mit.edu/browser/doc/intro.txt),
### Intro to Zsigs
-A "zsig" appears after your username (your Athena account name) in Zephyr (see [Using Zephyr (a.k.a. Zephyr for Dummies)](http://sipb.mit.edu/doc/zephyr) if you don't know what Zephyr is).
+A "zsig" appears after your username (your Athena account name) in Zephyr (see [[Using Zephyr (a.k.a. Zephyr for Dummies)|doc/zephyr]] if you don't know what Zephyr is).
By default, if your name is Jane Lillian Doe, your zsig is `(Jane L Doe)`. For instance, if you're on Zephyr, you might see
2013 / personal / jdoe 22:16 (Jane L Doe)
...hey I'm talking here.
-Most people keep it that way, since people may not immediately know who you are by your username. Some people opt to remove the middle initial or leave it at an interesting quote. To do so, in Barnowl simply type in
+Most people keep it that way, since people may not immediately know who you are by your username. Some people opt to remove the middle initial or leave it at an interesting quote. To do so, in BarnOwl simply type in
:set zsig "This is a very interestin' quote."
-(Barnowl accepts either single or double quotes to enclose your zsig, allowing you to use the other type of quote inside your zsig. Experiment, Barnowl tells you what it interpreted your command as by showing as confirmation
-
- zsig = 'This is a very interestin' quote.'
-
+(BarnOwl accepts either single or double quotes to enclose your zsig, allowing you to use the other type of quote inside your zsig. Experiment, BarnOwl tells you what it interpreted your command as by showing as confirmation
+ zsig = 'This is a very interestin' quote.'
### Random Zsig Generator
But what if you want to set up a random zsig generator?
-In outline, you write some code that prints a zsig out to `stdout`, then set up Barnowl to run that code, take the [stdout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stdout#Standard_output_.28stdout.29), and [pipe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_pipe) it into your zsig.
-(If you're not sure what piping or stdout is, just follow along--the wikipedia articles are kind of technical. Otherwise you probably already know everything you need to know and can stop reading this).
+**Deprecated: BarnOwl now has better built-in support for zsig randomization than it did when this page was written. Rather than reading the rest of this page, you may want to read `show variable zsigfunc`, and look at `random_zephyr_signature`.**
-#### Steps Outside of Barnowl: Creating the zsigs file and the zrandom program
+In outline, we use some bash magic that prints a zsig out to `stdout`, then set up BarnOwl to run that bit of bash magic. BarnOwl has something already which will automagically take that `stdout` and pipe it into your zsig.
+
+#### Steps Outside of BarnOwl: Creating the zsigs file
Connect to Athena if you haven't already.
1. Create a file of zsigs. In this article we'll call the file `.zsigs`
a zsig
random zsig2
random234
-
-3. Now create a file to store your code, named for instance `.zrandom`
-4. Write a program that randomly picks zsigs from your file and prints them out (to stdout), for instance:
+3. If you want to, test the bit of bash magic we'll be using
- #!/usr/athena/bin/python
- import random
- zfile = open('.zsigs')
- linelist = zfile.read().splitlines()
- zfile.close()
- print random.choice(linelist)
-
- If you want to use another language (e.g. perl or C), or check out what version is running on Athena, see [What Runs Where on Athena: Languages - IS&T] (http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/languages.html) and just swap out the first line with the language you want. See also [Random Zsigs - iZephyr](http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/izephyr/html/node35.html) for more example programs (note the instructions are outdated).
-
-5. If you want to, test your program.
-
- kusername@dr-wily:~$ python .zrandom
+ kusername@dr-wily:~$ shuf -n1 ~/.zsigs
random zsig2
The second line should be one of the zsigs from your list. Run it multiple times if you want to check for randomness.
-
-#### Setting Up Barnowl: Using the zsigproc variable
+#### Setting Up BarnOwl: Using the zsigproc variable
##### Background
-Open up Barnowl now.
+Open up BarnOwl now.
kusername@dr-wily:~$ add barnowl; barnowl
-Using the command `:show variables` inside of Barnowl we see descriptions of the variables of interest to us:
+Using the command `:show variables` inside of BarnOwl we see descriptions of the variables of interest to us:
zsig - zephyr signature (default: '')
zsigproc - name of a program to run that will generate zsigs (default: '<null>')
##### The Steps
-1. Use the `:startup` command in Barnowl to write to the "~/.owl/startup" file (or wherever you decided to put the your startup settings file for Barnowl). (Alternatively, edit the "~/.owl/startup" file directly). As mentioned in the detailed documentation, the variable `zsig` takes precedence over `zsigproc`. Make sure that `zsig` is empty. Then set `zsigproc` to your random zsig generator program's location.
+1. Use the `:startup` command in BarnOwl to write to the "~/.owl/startup" file (or wherever you decided to put the your startup settings file for BarnOwl). (Alternatively, edit the "~/.owl/startup" file directly). As mentioned in the detailed documentation, the variable `zsig` takes precedence over `zsigproc`. Make sure that `zsig` is empty. Then set `zsigproc` to run our bit of bash magic.
:startup set zsig ''
- :startup set zsigproc '~/.zrandom']
+ :startup set zsigproc 'shuf -n1 ~/.zsigs'
-2. Force Barnowl to reload the startup configuration file
+2. Force BarnOwl to reload the startup configuration file
:source "~/.owl/startup"
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