Viewing Single Post From: CipherSheet Beta Testing

Viewing Single Post From: CipherSheet Beta Testing
Donald	Aug 6 2008, 04:07 AM
Elite member Posts: 454 Group: Trusted Member Member #8 Joined: September 2, 2005	Hello folks! I need some help beta testing a new Cryptography related Java program. Here is the deal. I LOVE cracking Cryptograms by hand with just paper and pencil. But I HATE counting letters. So, I've written a program called CipherSheet that takes a cryptogram and produces a page with the cryptogram and all of the basic counting done for you so it is ready to solve. I'm an ACA member, so this program was designed to not only allow you to enter cryptograms by hand, but also to read in the "digital cons" format ACA file and convert them all into ciphersheets at once, ready to put into a folder and take with you wherever you go. The program can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/?wsjkrirf6ul It uses Java 6 features. If you don't have the latest version of Java, you can get it here: http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp To install the program simply unzip all of the files into a single folder. On many computers double clicking CipherSheet.jar will run the program. If it doesn't, go to the command prompt, navigate to the appropriate folder, and type: java -jar CipherSheet.jar The first thing you see when the program runs is a window like this: Select the "Enter By Hand" method if you want to enter cryptograms one at a time. Select the "Load from ACA File" method if you want to load an entire "digital cons" file. If you click the "Enter By Hand" button, you will see this screen: Name : is the name of this particular puzzle. I ususally name them by source, year, month, and the puzzle number. Hint : Put any hints/title/key/author information here. Cipher : Paste the cipher here. Don't worry about line breaks or punctuation, the program can handle them. Report Checkboxs : check or uncheck boxes to tell CipherSheet which reports you want. Count & Frequency : count and frequency for each letter Initial & Final : Initial and Final letter counts Contact : A simple SHORT contact report Frequency Order : the frequency count in frequency order instead of alphabetic Digrams : list of the most frequent digrams Doubles : list of all doubled letters Reverse : list of all reversed digrams Repeats : list all repeated sequences (longer than 2) in the message Pattern Words : list of words in the message that found matches in the pattern dictionary. Encrypt Pattern Words : If checked, pattern word matches will be Caesar Shifted 1-3 characters. Print : On this line you can pick a font, set your margins, and send the ciphersheet to the printer. Write To File : If, instead of printing, you would prefer to write the CipherSheet to a file, just select an output path and click here. The CipherSheet will be written to a file with the name you entered in the "name" field with an extension of .txt. A few notes: The pattern dictionary has been deliberately set up to exclude any patterns with more than 20 matches. Any more than that just clutters up your sheet with largely useless information. There are tools in CipherSheet (which I need to make easily accessible in the next version) that will allow you to build your own pattern dictionary with different parameters if you prefer. The reason I allow an option to encrypt pattern words is that pattern words can make cracking a cryptogram SO easy that they almost feel like cheating. With a simple Caesar shift I can ignore the pattern words until I get into a bind. Then easily unencrypt them if I'm having trouble. Now then, the resulting CipherSheet you create should look something like this: You will see your primary workspace all ready for you at the top of the page. The alphabet below that. Followed by the various reports you selected. Have fun cracking! Now then, if you want to convert an entire ACA "Digital Cons" file into CipherSheets, you should click the "Load from ACA File" at the begining. Then you will get to a screen that looks like this: ACA File : Select the ACA "Digital Cons" file you want to load Get : Choose what types of Cryptograms to get. Name Prefix : The "number" of the puzzle, such as A01 or P13 will be appended onto this prefix to give each cryptogram a unique name. The rest of it is pretty much the same. I've included an example "Digital Cons" file. You are NOT supposed to redistribute the actual ACA digital cons file, so this is a made up example using cryptograms from the publicly available Lanaki "Classical Cryptography Course" Note that the standard ACA "Digital Cons" file does NOT include author/hint/key/title info. But if you ADD that by hand after the puzzle number, the program will read it and include it in the ciphersheet printout. Known bugs: I'm having trouble getting the PRINT function to work under Linux, but the WRITE TO FILE works great. Planned Improvements: The program needs a help file. And I want to add the option to print a second page with a longer and more useful "contact/Variety Of Contact" report. I have another program that generates ciphers and cryptograms from sources such as The Bible or Shakespeare's plays (Or any public domain work, such as Burroughs "Barsoom" series). I want to combine it with CipherSheet to produce as many cryptograms as your heart could desire. So, there it is. Any help debugging and suggesting improvements would be muchly appreciated. Feedback, including and perhaps ESPECIALLY negative feedback, is certainly requested. Thanks!


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