Kant Generator Pro
Kant Generator Pro is a text application written by Mark Pilgrim for the 68k Macintosh. The application had the ability to create some very creative random text using various modules.
The application hasn't been updated to work on Mac OS X environment. There was some development work done about 10 years ago to port this over to Carbon code, but the developer ran into all sorts of difficulties and gave up on the project.
What is Kant Generator Pro?
The best way to understand the application is from the author. This is the description of Kant Generator Pro from the "About Menu" in the application:
Kant Generator Pro was originally designed to generate text that vaguely resembles Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, a brilliant and revolutionary piece of philosophical writing which, for some time now, has been serving as the fourth leg of my wobbly refrigerator. It has since been expanded to allow you to generate anything you like. Several modules are included with this program which can create anything from thank you notes to excuses for being late to work. You can also design your own modules with the full-featured module editor.
As Kant Generator Pro once said (and may say again some day): "Philosophy teaches us nothing whatsoever about philosophy." Words to live by.
I found Kant to be an amusing application. It's fun to see what creative sentences that would be generated. The text content would be good when you need a placeholder text and don't like using Lorem Ipsum text.Examples of The Excuse Module
Three example runs of the Excuse Module:
I stupidly plunged a leather punch through my son's leg, and when I was waiting for the repairman to get to my house there was this unspeakable fire, and then while I was scraping the strewn debris from my teeth, there was this explosion. Then I suffered a bout of severe paranoia, then there was this terrible hail storm, and then while I was scraping the bone chips from the floor, I suffered a petite mal seizure
Skip, this is Craig Michaels. It's sometime around 2:45 in the morning and I'll be a little late today. There was this fire, and when I was waiting for the insurance adjustor to arrive our dog contracted AIDS, and then while I was picking the broken glass out of my mouth, there was this cyclone, then there was this traffic jam, and when I was waiting for the towing company to show up our dog caught pneumonia...
"Excuses, Excuses" is based on the remarkable reasons a former coworker of mine would come up with for why he couldn't come in to work. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, but some of the instantiations are pretty darn close to reality. - Mike W. Miller