Texts Rotator rotates the texts in eight directions within an adjustable rectangular grid.   It can be used to obfuscate texts, played as a puzzle game, as well as to create your own text puzzle.

1. Texts rotation in eight directions;
2. Resizable grid;
3. A combination of 576 possible grid sizes;
4. User defined rotation point;
5. Shields protecting letters from being rotated;
6. Generating macro to undo or to repeat the rotation process;
7. Let you create your own text puzzle;
8. Able to predefine the rotation sequence;

1. Texts Rotator.exe
2. TR_res.dll
3. FILE_ID.DIZ
4. Text_Rotator_help.html
5. letter square.trt
6. magic square.trt
7. proverb.trt

Any Windows operating systems version 95 or above, including Vista.

First, type some texts you would like to rotate and save them as txt file or 'trt' file (Texts Rotator file type), or copy them to your Clipboard, then, run Texts Rotator.exe and open the saved txt file or 'trt' file from the 'File' menu, or paste from your Clipboard from the 'Edit' menu.   Pick a square as the rotation point by left clicking one of the squares of the grid.  The color of the square you have chosen will turn to red.

Now you are ready to rotate the texts using the eight rotation buttons on the right.

Each rotation you have made will be recorded into the do / undo box below the grid, where you may repeat each rotation sequence by clicking the 'do' button or to undo it by clicking the 'undo' button.
If the rotation sequence is too long, you may press 'Esc' to stop it any time.

If there are certain letters in the grid you would prefer them not to be rotated, you may shield it.
There are a total of twenty-six shields you may apply to the squares of the grid to protect the letters within from being rotated.
To apply a shield to the square, right click the square.  The color of the letter in the square will turn to black.
To unshield a square, right click the square again.  The color of the letter in the square will turn back to white, which is the normal font color.
Note: You cannot apply shield to the square in which the letter is a space.

After you have played for a while, and you have no idea which direction to rotate?  Check out the option random rotate in the Rotation menu.

In this package also enclosed are three simple puzzles saved in the files: letter square.trt, magic square.trt, and proverb.trt, you may open them and play.
The goal (and the answer) of the puzzles will be explained in the following sections.

Finally, and optionally, if you would like to predefine your own rotation sequence, so that the texts will be rotated to the same directions every time, just type your own rotation sequence into the do / undo box then click 'do', but this requires you to take a few minutes to learn how the macro is contructed first, click Deconstructing Rotation Macro to jump to that section now.

That's it!  It's that simple to use!

There are two save options in the 'File' menu:  'Save' and 'Save With'.

The difference between 'Save' and 'Save With' is that 'Save' will only save the (rotated) texts, while 'Save With' will save also the information required to undo the rotations you have made, which includes the current grid size in use, the squares which has been shielded if any, and the undo sequence.  The three enclosed puzzles are all saved with the option 'Save With'.

Whichever option you chose to save the texts, Texts Rotator will detect the format used automatically when you open it next time.

The default file extension for Texts Rotator is 'trt'.

Amongst some editing options in this menu, there is a small Texts editor for you to edit the texts in the grid.  You may toggle it from within the Edit menu.  Once checked, the small Texts editor will appear on the right, just below those rotation buttons, where you may paste the texts in the grid to the Texts editor, and update the texts to the grid.
Since this editor is designed especially for editing short passages or sentences for the grid, the number of letters you key in cannot exceed the number of square of the current grid size.

There are four options under this menu:

speed, sound, random rotate, and force rotate.

speed:  Let you change the rotation speed.

sound:  Let you toggle the rotation sound effect.

random rotate:  Let your computer decide which directions to rotate.
Once this option is checked, the random button will appear in the middle of those eight rotation buttons.
Note: 'Random rotate' will also randomly pick a rotation point for you if you have not picked one, otherwise, it will keep using the same rotation point that you have picked.
Hint: You may unpick the rotation point by left clicking the square again.

Force rotate:  This option allows you to force the rotation sequence to continue even when errors found in the do / undo box.   Error might be happening only when someone has the macro modified or has written his/her own rotation sequence.  Normally, the program will stop at any errors.   When this option is checked, the program will call its built-in logic to try to resolve the errors.   It is also worth to note that, if you have this option checked, you may type in any phrase as the rotation sequence, ignoring all rules of constructing macro, for example, the phrase "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." will rotate the texts nine times.   Just remarked that the result may be different when the size of the grid is changed.

There are four options under this menu:

Always On Top, Format, Filling, and Grid size.

Always On Top:  This makes the window of Texts Rotator always (most of the time) visible.

Format:  This option will only affect the output texts via 'save' or 'copy'.
The format you choose tell Texts Rotator whether a Carriage Return and / or Line Feed should be added to the end of each column of the grid when you output the texts.   If you choose 'Auto' (default), Texts Rotator will use the format according to the input texts.

Filling:  Here you may choose the filling character to fill the empty squares of the grid.   You will see this character filling the grid only when the number of letters in your texts is less than the total number of the squares of the grid.  The default filling character is a space.
Note: The filling character is only to fill the empty squares, it will not replace the spaces within your texts.

Grid size:  Here you may change the size of the grid, ranges of width and height available are from three to twenty-six.

The goal of the puzzle game is to rotate the letters until all 25 letters (A to Y) are in alphabetical order, from left to right and from top to bottom, like this:

ABCDE
FGHIJ
KLMNO
PQRST
UVWXY

Here is the undo sequence:

"AC6 AC2 EC6 EC2 CC3 CC1 CC2 BC2 DC2"

After you have opened letter square.trt, just paste the above sequence (without quotes) into the do / undo box, then click 'undo', and watch.

The goal of the Magic square puzzle is to rotate the numbers so that the sum of all three columns and three rows, and two diagonal lines is fifteen, it could be like this:

438
951
276

This time the answer is not included; send me an e-mail if you would like to know the answer.

There is a proverb in the file 'proverb.trt', can you solve it?

In this puzzle game, the shield feature is also applied.

Actually, if you like this, you may create as much as puzzles like this of your own, to challenge your friends, and to test your skill and patience!
You are free to distribute your own created text puzzle.

This section is to explain how the rotation macro is constructed which is generated automatically upon each rotation you have made.  This rotation macro can be used to repeat or to undo a rotation process.   To simply play with the rotations, you don't need to read this section.

About the macro:

Each set of macro is made up of two letters ('A' to 'Z'') and a digit ('1' to '9' except '5').   The first two letters are the co-ordinates of the rotation point, the last digit is the direction it's been rotated.

About the grid:

The grid is made up of squares, and each square has its own co-ordinates on the grid.   The co-ordinates are used to mark the rotation point.   The letters implemented for the co-ordinates are from 'A' to 'Z' (for a grid of 26 x 26), both for x and y axes.

To illustrate:

  A B C D E F G H ... Z
A
B     1
C
D               2
.
.
.
Z

For example:

About the digits for the rotation directions:

Here are the digits representing the rotation directions:

789
4 6
123

where

'4' means rotated to the left;
'6' means rotated to the right;
'8' means rotated upwards;
'9' means rotated diagonally to the upper right, etc, etc.

So, for example, if the rotation point is set on the fourth column and the third row, and the rotation direction is upwards, the macro should be 'DC8'.

Sets of macro must be separated by at least one space.

• Texts Rotator IS DISTRIBUTED "AS IS".  NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.  YOU USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.  NEITHER THE AUTHOR NOR THE AGENTS OF THE AUTHOR WILL BE LIABLE FOR DATA LOSS, DAMAGES, LOSS OF PROFITS OR ANY OTHER KIND OF LOSS WHILE USING OR MISUSING THIS SOFTWARE.

The feature "Check Integrity" is in the Help menu.   When this feature is called, the program will check Texts Rotator.exe to see whether it has been tampered.   This feature is just to inform you whether the copy you have downloaded is intact.

This software is free.  If you use it, play it, keep a copy of it, send it to your friend, or upload it to any website, I just would like to have an email telling me about that.  My name is Kalvin.   Here is my e-mail: kalvinau2003@yahoo.com