Nonsense

Nonsense generates random (and sometimes humorous) text from datafiles and templates using a very simple, recursive grammar. It's like having a million monkeys sitting in front of a million typewriters, without having to feed or clean up after them. From the Slashdot homepage to absurd college courses to buzzword bingo cards, Nonsense is a good way to waste time.

Online Demo

Take a look at some of the things Nonsense can produce:

• Slashdot homepage - It's a very realistic simulation, but there is one way you can tell it apart from the real thing: it doesn't simulate CmdrTaco's spelling and grammatical errors (yet).
• College course titles - "An Ad-Hoc Investigation Into The Postmodern Paradigms Of Random Text Generators: Ideas In Conflict"
• Linux portal domain names - Need a trademark for your new portal site?
• Stupid laws - Let's just hope your Congressmen doesn't discover this.
• Mission statements - And let's really hope your Pointy Haired Boss doesn't learn about this.
• Buzzword Bingo - Yes, a practical application for Nonsense.
• Newspaper cover page - A realistic portrayal of your hometown newspaper, without the ads.
• Techdirt homepage - They asked for it.
• Humorix homepage - Of course I had to produce a simulation of my own site!

Latest Version

The latest version is 0.6, released February 10, 2001. Download the tarball right now (122 KB) or fetch other versions from the downloads page.

Nonsense is...

- Licensed under the GNU General Public License

- Written in Perl 5

- Executable from a command-line or CGI environment on virtually any platform that supports Perl

- Created by James Baughn. Fred Hirsch and Peter Suschlik have submitted patches.

- Guaranteed to provide hours of mindless entertainment or your electrons back

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