Englipsum

See http://hardmath123.github.io/englipsum.

Usage

Simply include englipsum.js in your HTML file:

<script src="https://github.com/Hardmath123/englipsum/raw/gh-pages/englipsum.js"></script>

OR (an easy-to-remember-but-not-guaranteed-to-always-exist alternative)

<script src="http://is.gd/englipsum"></script>

OR (an it-works-offline-but-I-need-to-download-a-file alternative)

$ curl https://github.com/Hardmath123/englipsum/raw/gh-pages/englipsum.js > englipsum.js
<script src="englipsum.js"></script>

Elements of class englipsum will be populated with placeholder text automatically.

<div class="englipsum"></div>

You can customize settings by including JSON in the element:

<div class="englipsum">
{
    "paragraphs": 3,
    "links": true
}
</div>

Reference

Property	Value
paragraphs	The number of paragraphs to generate
sentences	The number of sentences per paragraph
links	Generate random links? (they are uniquely stamped so that testing a:visited is easy)
ems	Italicize random words?
dict	Provide your own dictionary. Object with fields (all optional) nouns, verbs, adjs, advs
dict	Reference a provided dictionary. Possible values: "farm"

Examples

Create a to-do list:

<ol>
    <li class="englipsum"> {"sentences": 1, "paragraphs": 1}</li>
    <li class="englipsum"> {"sentences": 1, "paragraphs": 1}</li>
    <li class="englipsum"> {"sentences": 1, "paragraphs": 1}</li>
    <li class="englipsum"> {"sentences": 1, "paragraphs": 1}</li>
</ol>

Placeholder text about animals:

<div class="englipsum">
{
    "dict": {
        "nouns": ["cow", "pig", "sheep", "fish"],
        "verbs": ["eats", "hunts", "protects", "kills", "loves", "adores", "licks"]
    }
}
</div>

How does this thing work?

Short answer: by not using Markov chains.

Less short answer: Englipsum contains lots of templates, which reference other templates recursively (for example, the template for a sentence references the template for a noun and a verb). The generator walks this template-tree, choosing random paths when asked to branch. It's the opposite of parsing.

Node

Englipsum is published on npm. I'm not sure how it'll help you, but feel free to npm install englipsum. Maybe someone will invent a good lipsum command-line tool someday.

Contributing

Yeah. PRs are appreciated. Ideally, there would be larger dictionaries, and more phrases.