Ruby Forum Ruby > Big Words (#204)

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## Big Words (#204)

Wassup Rubyists,

This weeks quiz was submitted by Alan.

Write a method that will return a large version of a string you provide 
it.

(Copy the output into a monospaced buffer for better viewing)

puts big_word('BIGWORD')
######  #######  #####  #     #  #####  ######  ######
#     #    #    #       #     # #     # #     # #     #
######     #    #   ### #  #  # #     # ######  #     #
#     #    #    #     # #  #  # #     # #    #  #     #
######  #######  #####   ## ##   #####  #     # ######


For extra credit you may include additional font styles, such as italic.

puts big_word('BIGWORD', 'i')
   ######  #######  #####  #     #  #####  ######  ######
  #     #    #    #       #     # #     # #     # #     #
 ######     #    #   ### #  #  # #     # ######  #     #
#     #    #    #     # #  #  # #     # #    #  #     #
######  #######  #####   ## ##   #####  #     # ######


Have Fun!

Daniel Moore wrote:
> ## Big Words (#204)

This quiz immediately reminded me of FIGlet[1].  A reimplementation of
FIGlet in Ruby seemed to be a sensible way to solve this quiz, taking
into account the hundreds of fonts already available in the FIGlet 
format
(saving me from creating my own font).  Fortunately I wasn't the first
one to have that idea: the "Text" gem[2] includes a Ruby implementation
of FIGlet!  So I couldn't resist to do this:

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  require 'rubygems'
  require 'text'

  def big_word(str, fontfile='banner.flf')
    font = Text::Figlet::Font.new(fontfile)
    figlet = Text::Figlet::Typesetter.new(font)
    figlet[str]
  end

  if __FILE__ == $0
    while str = ARGV.shift
      puts big_word(str)
    end
  end

Sample run:

  reima@marvin:~/devel/ruby/quiz/204$ ./big_word.rb "Ruby Quiz"
   ######                          #####
   #     # #    # #####  #   #    #     # #    # # ######
   #     # #    # #    #  # #     #     # #    # #     #
   ######  #    # #####    #      #     # #    # #    #
   #   #   #    # #    #   #      #   # # #    # #   #
   #    #  #    # #    #   #      #    #  #    # #  #
   #     #  ####  #####    #       #### #  ####  # ######

The font file needed to run the script can be obtained from [3].  Or 
pick
any font from the font database[4] you fancy and change the file name in
the script.

-Matthias

[1]: http://www.figlet.org/
[2]: http://text.rubyforge.org/
[3]: http://www.figlet.org/fonts/banner.flf
[4]: http://www.figlet.org/fontdb.cgi

This week's quiz was solved by Matthias Reitinger. Let's check out the 
solution:

    require 'rubygems'
    require 'text'

    def big_word(str, fontfile='banner.flf')
      font = Text::Figlet::Font.new(fontfile)
      figlet = Text::Figlet::Typesetter.new(font)
      figlet[str]
    end

Matthias uses the `Text` gem[1] to display fonts using the FIGlet[2]
format. The `big_word` method takes an optional font file parameter to
allow different styles. It operates by loading the file, creating a
FIGlet Typesetter from the font, and passing the input string to the
Typesetter. An easy to use and straightforward library.

There are a couple of prerequisites to use the program, though. You'll
need the `Text` gem and a font file[3]. I found that when installing
the gem, I needed to use the command `gem install Text`; the command
with lowercase `text` wouldn't work for me. Matthias also links to the
FIGlet font database[4] where there are some amazing fonts available.

In addition to FIGlet, the `Text` gem includes many other useful
libraries like Metaphone and Soundex. The Metaphone component of the
`Text` gem was used way back on Quiz #140[5] to sound out T-Shirts.

Thank you, Matthias, for sharing this useful library.

     ____            __                  _____
    /\  _`\         /\ \                /\  __`\          __
    \ \ \L\ \  __  __\ \ \____  __  __  \ \ \/\ \  __  __/\_\  ____
     \ \ ,  / /\ \/\ \ \ '__`\/\ \/\ \   \ \ \ \ \/\ \/\ \/\ \/\_ ,`\
      \ \ \\ \\ \ \_\ \ \ \L\ \ \ \_\ \   \ \ \\'\\ \ \_\ \ \ \/_/  /_
       \ \_\ \_\ \____/\ \_,__/\/`____ \   \ \___\_\ \____/\ \_\/\____\
        \/_/\/ /\/___/  \/___/  `/___/> \   \/__//_/\/___/  \/_/\/____/
                                   /\___/
                                   \/__/


[1]: http://text.rubyforge.org/
[2]: http://www.figlet.org/
[3]: http://www.figlet.org/fonts/banner.flf
[4]: http://www.figlet.org/fontdb.cgi
[5]: http://rubyquiz.com/quiz140.html