1. The text file

The text file ANSI format file, preferably created in Notepad. At the moment, the current version cannot yet handle UNICODE text, will this feature will be added in future versions. A text file should consist of several lines of text, preferably quite long lines (or rather paragraphs of text). At least two lines of text must be made available to properly read the full text. The text file has two possible formats: free text and formatted text. An example of a free text format is:

Using masks to fully control the shape of the word cloud pre-installed masks are provided user generated masks on-the-fly load and save masks for repeated use special masks using the transparency mask of PNG files Post-processing store the resulting picture on harddisk print or post-process the pictures using external bitmap editor
Video creation several implosion or explosion paths many settings for size duration and word animation Projects to save and repeat creating the same word cloud pre-installed projects save and load new or existing projects

This example text has already been 'cleaned' of special characters, like '" < * & [ etc. In case you wish to input 'raw' text the text will be cleaned first before the individual words are extracted and counted. An example of a 'raw' text could be:

Word clouds have become very popular. Thanks to the wordlet JavaScript (like Wordle) anyone can make a beautiful picture with words. Do you want to control the shape of the word cloud? Wordaizer is a brand new application from APP Helmond to create word clouds like Wordle does, but allows total freedom to tune almost every relevant aspect of the desired word cloud. It's really a 1-2-3 approach.

The formatted text file can be something like this:

the: 120
and: 106
right: 33
Everyone: 30
has: 28
shall: 27
rights: 21
his: 21
any: 18
for: 17
human: 12

The format of this file is quite simple: first the word, followed by the ':' and then the frequency (or size) value. The value should be relative to each other, meaning: a word with value 120 should be twice the font size of a word of value 60. Ideally this would be the case, but the application is also trying to squeeze in as many words as possible, so the actual size is usually slightly higher than e.g. the indicated 60.

In this example we have put a space between the : and the value. In case of no space between the value will still be read correctly. The last value must always end with a new line (so the last line of the file is always empty).

Warning: in case a word is not followed by the ':' and a number, the application will assume that the text file is free format. Even if one word doesn't follow this convention, the file is assumed to be free format. In that case the numbers that were indicated in other words will now also appear in the Calligram. To avoid this, please make sure that all the words in that file have a ':' and a numeric value.

2. The font list file

The font list file is an ANSI format file, preferably created in Notepad (to get rid of any formatting, like e.g. WordPad does). The fonts list file is just a series of lines with the font name, as used in Windows. To recognize the font correctly, the font name must be exactly the same as Windows uses it. For example:

Arial
Black Chancery
Book Antiqua
Bookman Old Style
Century Gothic
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Garamond
Georgia
Lucinda Console
Microsoft Sans Serif

In case the font name is not exactly the same as in Windows, it will either be skipped, or in some rare cases an error message will occur. It goes without saying that the indicated fonts must also be available in the system that runs Calligram Creator. In future versions we will include a simple font test, to assure all the input fonts are correctly recognized.

3. The colour list file

The colour list file is a file that contains the HEX code of the Calligram colours. When a colour list file is used, the application will distribute the colours from top to bottom, where the change from one colour to the next is done via interpolating between the two hue factors. There is no limit to the number of colours in the file. When the HEX colour format is incorrect, the resulting colour is undefined (meaning: anything can happen then...). The HEX code is a hexadecimal value of the Red, Green and Blue channel of the colour. Example:

EE0707
433FD7
116506
056862

The first values EE0707 = R238 G7 B7. The second value 433FD7 = R67 G63 B215. These values can easily be defined in e.g. Photoshop. The values are identical as defined in Photoshop (see screenshot below).

4. The Emojigram picture library

Each image must be of type .PNG, and must be transparent where no pixels are seen. The images must be of size 72 x 72 pixels. To create a truly useful library, at least 1000 images should be made available, all of same size and image type. When faulty images are found, errors may occur or weird/faulty mosaic may result. Below a sample of randomly placed emojis are shown.