scattering a lot of text on a page randomly..

[dancebles]

hello,

let me try to explain what i want to do as a beginner.

i've a list of about 500 words {some are two or three words together}.

i want to make some sort of collage out of them.. on a page i want to paste them and make them in a random order scattered on the page in 45 degrees. every word or words are shown without anything hiding it. just a simple text in hebrew.. {i might need to flip them before i use them in affinity}

can you tell me how i can do it easily?

if you need to better understand let me know.

thank you in advance..

and love from israel..

[thomaso]

There are various ways for each of your various conditions.

You probably need different tools before you can start with the page layout, which makes it hard to find "the best" way, since it depends on individual skills and also custom habits, for instance what you prefer to do manually and what rather automatically – while they influence each other in the available options. So just a view thoughts to start with …:

• The text can get flipped with an online tool, there are various websites to convert text from LTR to RTL.
• If your text input list is not in a wanted "random" order already you might find an online tool which can randomize words. (at least I know such exists for characters within a text)
• Opening a PDF can give you single text frames for each of its text lines, instead of 1 text frame with 1 paragraph containing several lines. It may depend how the PDF was exported.
• With several paragraph text frames + large leading placed on each other you can create a kind of random impression if they get placed with horizontal and vertical offset.
• To separate words into separate snippets you can use Find & Replace: replace every space character into a special character, e.g. a paragraph / frame / or page break. Where one element contains several words you would manually re-type the space character. This would enable you to paste the entire text into text frames which are linked for auto-text-flow. This requires to use Frame Text frames since Art Text frames can't get linked.
• If all text snippets are rotated by 45 degree I would create the entire layout 'normally' oriented (horizontally) and just rotate the final layout for export or even after export.

If you want to vary in text styles:

• Art Text frames make it easier to customize text styles individually than linked Frame Text frames.
• If using linked text frames then an option to simulate a randomized appearance in the styles of the text snippets could be: create a few text styles with using the "Next Style" option, this automatically creates visual variations in the text style appearance between paragraphs (breaks).

As far I know Affinity offers randomness only as brush property. If using this option the workflow requires certain steps and also has limitations, e.g. a brush needs an image as input, doesn't recognize 'text' (spaces, words) but pixels only and creates rasterized output only. Also, if you would create a long horizontal image containing several text snippets in a long line, every single brush stroke seems to start at one edge of its image (which would mean every brush stroke starts with the same word and make it rather useless for your goal).

[v_kyr]

• Word Cloud Generator - Jason Davies <-- ***
• Jason Davies - 3d cloud (Github)
• Best Free Word Cloud Generators to Visualize Data
• 7 Best Word Cloud Generator Tools for School and Work
• ggwordcloud: a word cloud geom for ggplot2
• Generating WordClouds in Python Tutorial
• Amueller - word_cloud (Github - Python)
• ... and so on ...

There are too many to list them all!

[thomaso]

22 minutes ago, thomaso said:

With several paragraph text frames + large leading placed on each other you can create a kind of random impression if they get placed with horizontal and vertical offset.

Affinity ten-minute trial …

… with 6 linked text frames, each with 3 columns.

[thomaso]

10 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

There are too many to list them all!

Oh, I just wasted time quite useless … 😅

[v_kyr]

9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Oh, I just wasted time quite useless … 😅

Apparently since the Affinity apps are honestly not the right tools for the job! - This might change one day (in the distant future) though, if they have/will offer some scripting capabilities and/or some third party developer APIs to hook into.

[dancebles]

for now it's seems too complicated but i will try again tomorrow thomaso

v_kyr. i've tried all the tools except for the github one with no success. most of them don't allow hebrew. and those that do make a mess. i've tried the options but still.

i will try them again tommorrow

thank you!

 

edit...

eventually succeeded with https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/

[v_kyr]

33 minutes ago, dancebles said:

v_kyr. i've tried all the tools except for the github one with no success. most of them don't allow hebrew. and those that do make a mess. i've tried the options but still.

Should be a matter of using a hebrew capable font and support for those too!

• WordItOut

Python based tools can for sure (if used in the right manner), see therefor ...

• create wordcloud in python for foreign language (Hebrew)
• Python wordcloud can't present Hebrew