Message Plugins

Message Plugins
Eudora Tip #141/17-July-2002

EBG 13 pna or irel unaql.

Hmmm, puzzled by the line above? Wondering if your computer’s developed a problem? Well, relax! I’ve just used the ROT 13 Text message plugin. The line above actually says: ROT 13 can be very handy.

Why would anyone want to mangle their text in this way? Well, how would you like me to tell you who was bumped off Survivor on the episode I’ve seen but you haven’t yet caught up on? The score for the major football game you haven’t yet seen? Who did it in the murder mystery you borrowed from me?

My guess is that you’d be a bit annoyed. ROT 13 Text allows me to mention any of these things, but in a way that means you can choose whether or not to have that information revealed.

First select the “garbage” text above and then go to the Edit Menu – Message Plugins – ROT 13 Text. Magically the text is now turned back into real words.

If you look carefully you’ll see that ROT 13 simply uses the old trick of replacing each letter with the letter 13 ahead of it in the alphabet. It’s short for Rotate by 13 letters.

If you use the Plugin on normal text it creates the “coded” version.

While you’re there take a look at the other Message Plugins. You can convert text to All Caps, Lower case, Word Caps and Sentence case. And remember, you can use this on text you’re sending but also on a message you’ve received (see also Tip #23/27-Feb-2000).