Computer: Text Feature
Vortext (Basic +Delux)   (+6, -4)  [vote for, against]
Method of deleting a layout page of text and images.

Vortext is a small programme that you install in order to make more satisfying page deletions, when using layout creators like QuarkXpress.

In appearance Vortext resembles a small bath plug, complete with a ring on top, which sits innocently at the bottom of each page, but does not print out.

Next time you have a page layout to delete, just take your cursor down to the plug and pull it out. The entire page does its best imitation of an emptying sink or bath, complete with gurgling noise, as it makes its way down the hole which the plug has until now been covering. The sound effects only serve to compliment the swirling vortex (hence the name) of broken lines of text, words, and fragmented images now spiralling at increasing speed down the welcoming plug-hole.

Small deletions are also possible, by highlighting the offending items, and again pulling the plug. They are still sucked out, but everything around them remains untouched.

Vortext Delux, the upgrade to Vortex Basic comes with a small tool kit. Blockages caused by large, unwieldy sentences or coagulating words can be cleared with the plunger tool or using judicious infusions of a powerful digital, dissolving chemical. This is brand labelled Sarcaustic Soda, and has the power to cut through anything constructed from language.

Once deleted, using either version of Vortext, everything goes into a settling sump, which can be emptied by printing out. This results in a layered, graphic representation of the initial page reduced to an illegible grey-scale strata, interrupted by lines of colour, much like a geographic cross-section. The longer the sump is allowed to settle, the more even and uniform is the image. Each of these will be unique in their own way, and incapable of repetition.

They can be exhibited under the collective name of: “Vortextures, (the deletions of the Great, the Wise, the Stupid, the Devious and the Ordinary)”
-- xenzag, Feb 07 2007

I would enjoy this. [+]
-- pertinax, Feb 08 2007


+ for Sarcaustic Soda
-- Ling, Feb 08 2007


He took his Vortext tool in hand:
Scowled at the useless words on page -
'twas then that he pulled the bath-plug free
And watched the vortex rage.

And as he saw each loathsome word
Swirl and spiral while it came
He cackled madly when he heard
It gurgle down the drain.

[+]
-- imaginality, Feb 08 2007



random, halfbakery