oceanscript 1.2.2

An extensive esolang built with a python interpreter.

OceanScript Esoteric Language

Welcome! This library is home to oceanscript - An extensive esolang built with a python interpreter. It's purpose is simple - for fun. This "esolang" shouldn't be used for anything more than a bit of fun, but also can be used for mind games, as it takes infuriatingly long just to write a single sentence.

Oceanscript was given it's name due to the fact that the script looks like waves in the ocean when it is written. See the image above, for example.

It's sheer complexity means that nothing is supported aside from alphanumeric characters. Punctuation is unsupported. Capitalization is ignored. You'll see why further down this page.

Oceanscript uses a range of three to six characters PER letter, with each letter joined together, and each word joined together by a line break. A single word can take up quite a few spaces on each line of a document or notepad.

Let's start of with a basic example - to see what I'm really talking about:

_-.~-.^>..^>..~>..
~-...~>.._>..^>..~<.

Yep. Complicated right? The text you see above says "hello world". Don't worry - it really is much easier to understand when we learn how the letter structure works.

Building letters

Visualize 4 boxes. Each box has 9 squares inside, with 3 columns, and 3 rows. So basically, four 3x3 boxes. This is what we need to start building our letters.

# Box 1
[A] [B] [C]
[D] [E] [F]
[G] [H] [I]

# Box 2
[J] [K] [L]
[M] [N] [O]
[P] [Q] [R]

# Box 3
[S] [T] [U]
[V] [W] [X]
[Y] [Z] [0]

# Box 4
[1] [2] [3]
[4] [5] [6]
[7] [8] [9]

Each letter and number has its own square in this configuration. However, each column and row in this configuration are joined together. For example, this means that A, D, G, J, M, P, S, V, Y, 1, 4 and 7 are all in column 1.

We need to first take a look at our markers. These are essentially pointers towards where our letter is in this configuration. The following characters are known as markers: which make up oceanscript as a whole.

Markers

• ^: Denotes the top row

• ~: Denotes the middle row

• _: Denotes the bottom row

• <: Denotes the left column

• -: Denotes the middle column

• >: Denotes the right column

• .: Denotes box 1

• ..: Denotes box 2

• ...: Denotes box 3

• ....: Denotes box 4

We use the markers in the following order: row -> column -> box. Let's start of with an example, with letter A. We will zoom in on A's box, so it's slighty easier for us:

# Box 1
[A] [B] [C]
[D] [E] [F]
[G] [H] [I]

We need to first identify the row for letter A - it's on the top row in our box. Now let's refer back to our markers. The top row character is a carot (^). This character signifies the top row, as it's pointing upwards. This is the first character for our letter A in oceanscript!

Next, we need to find out the column for our letter. A is in the left column, so looking at our markers, our next character is a less than sign (<). This character signifies the left column, as it's pointing left.

Finally, we need to identify the box our letter is in. It's clearly in box 1, so we add 1 dot to the end of our character.

This means that the letter A in oceanscript is ^<..

It's really important to reference from the boxes. It's very difficult to memorise the boxes in your head. However, with time, you will be able to memorise the markers.

You can see more how-to guides in the Doc directory.

Python Implementation

Oceanscript is built with a python interpreter, translator, encoder/decoder, whatever name fits best. This small library available on PyPi contains two functions, used to encode and decode into oceanscript.

Start by importing the module.

import oceanscript

Use the encode function to convert normal text into oceanscript.

oceanscript.encode('hello')
>>> '_-.~-.^>..^>..~>..'

Use the decode function to convert oceanscript back into normal text.

oceanscript.decode('_-.~-.^>..^>..~>..')
>>> 'hello'

Note that capitalization is ignored for both functions. Oceanscript doesn't and won't support capitalization or punctuation - as that's not what it was designed for.

These functions may raise exceptions which you can access in the oceanscript.errors module. They all subclass oceanscript.errors.OceanScriptError.

The encoder can raise the UnsupportedCharacterError exception, when an unsupported character is passed to the encoder. Only ascii letters and spaces are supported.

The decoder can also raise ParserError, which is for when the decoder failed to parse a string.

This project is still in partial development. Use for fun, and provide feedback!

Command Line Interface

As well as it's standard python implementation, OceanScript also has a command line interface (built with argparse) which allows you to encode and decode oceanscript.

Top level command name is oceanscript.

$ oceanscript

Use the --encode and --decode arguments to convert oceanscript to and from.

$ oceanscript --encode testing
>>> 'Encoded oceanscript: ^-...~-.^<...^-..._>.~-.._<.'

$ oceanscript --decode "^-...~-.^<...^-..._>.~-.._<."
>>> 'Decoded oceanscript: testing'

It's important that you wrap your decode arguments with quotation marks. Most noticeably, important oceanscript characters cannot be parsed due to the nature of command line interfaces.

License

This project is under the MIT license.