glitched-writer

Glitched Writer

What it Glitched Writer:

A lightweight, glitched, text writing module. Highly customizable settings. Decoding, decrypting, scrambling, and simply spelling text. For web and node.

Features:

• Writes your text, by glitching or spelling it out.

• Highly customizable behavior. Set of options will help you achieve the effect you desire.

• Can be attached to a HTML Element for automatic text-displaying.

• Callback functions firing on finish and every step.

• Custom Event gw-finished are dispatched on the HTML Element.

• For styling purposes writer attatches gw-writing class to the HTML Element and data-gw-string attribute with current string.

• Possible to write text with html tags in it or letterize string into many span elements.

• Written in Typescript.

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Table Of Contents

1. Installation
2. Usage
   • Creating Class Instance
   • Writing
   • Pausing & Playing
   • One-Time-Use
   • On Text Input
   • Listening For Events
   • Add & Remove
   • Writing HTML
   • Letterize
   • Available imports
3. Presets
4. Options

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Installation

Download package through npm.

npm i glitched-writer

Then import GlitchedWriter class in the JavaScript file.

import GlitchedWriter from 'glitched-writer'

Or use the CDN and attach this script link to your html document.

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/glitched-writer@2.0.10/lib/index.min.js"></script>

Usage:

Creating Class Instance

Creating writer class instance:

// Calling GlitchedWriter constructor:
const Writer = new GlitchedWriter(
	htmlElement, // Element or Selector string
	options, // {...} or Preset name
	onStepCallback, // (string, data) => {}
	onFinishCallback, // (string, data) => {}
)

// Custom options:
const Writer = new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, {
	interval: [10, 70],
	oneAtATime: true,
	letterize: true,
})

// On-step-callback added:
const Writer = new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, {}, (string, writerData) => {
	console.log(`Current string: ${string}`)
	console.log('All the class data:', writerData)
})

Writing

Writing stuff and waiting with async / await.

import { wait } from 'glitched-writer'

// Wrap this in some async function:
// Or use .then() instead.
const res = await Writer.write('Welcome')

console.log(`Finished writing: ${res.string}`)
console.log('All the writer data:', res)

await wait(1200) // additional simple promise to wait some time

await Writer.write('...to Glitch City!')

Pausing & Playing

Writer.write('Some very cool header.').then(({ status, message }) => {
	// this will run when the writing stops.
	console.log(`${status}: ${message}`)
})

setTimeout(() => {
	Writer.pause() // will stop writing
}, 1000)

setTimeout(async () => {
	await Writer.play() // continue writing

	console.log(Writer.string) // will log after finished writing
}, 2000)

One-Time-Use

For quick one-time writing.

import { glitchWrite } from 'glitched-writer'

glitchWrite('Write this and DISAPER!', htmlElement, options, ...)

On Text Input

Don't be afraid to call write method on top of each oder. New will stop the ongoing.

inputEl.addEventListener('input', () => {
	Writer.write(inputEl.value)
})

Listening For Events

// html element that you passed in writer constructor.
textHtmlElement.addEventListener('gw-finished', e =>
	console.log('finished writing:', e.detail.string),
)

Add & Remove

.add(string) & .remove(number) are methods usefull for quick, slight changes to the displayed text.

// Let's say current text content is: "Hello World"

Writer.add('!!!')
// -> Hello World!!!

Writer.remove(9)
// -> Hello

Writing HTML

(! experimental & potentially dangerous !) Let's you write text with html tags in it. Can be enabled along with "letterize" option, but the "double tags", like ... won't show up.

// You need to enable html option.
const Writer = new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, { html: true })

Writer.write('<b>Be sure to click <a href="...">this!</a></b>')

Letterize

(Experimental!) Splits written text into series of elements. Then writing letters seperately into these child-elements.

// You need to enable html option.
const Writer = new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, { letterize: true })

Writer.write('Hello there!')
/**
 * The shape of one character:
 * span.gw-char (state classes: .gw-typing or .gw-finished)
 * 	span.gw-ghosts
 * 	span.gw-letter (also .gw-glitched when it is a "glitched" char.)
 * 	span.gw-ghosts
 */

Available imports

List of all things that can be imported from glitched-writer module.

import GlitchedWriter, { // <-- GlitchedWriter class
	ConstructorOptions, // <-- Options type
	Callback, // <-- Callback type
	WriterDataResponse, // <-- Type of response in callbacks
	glitchWrite, // <-- One time write funcion
	presets, // <-- Object with all prepared presets of options
	glyphs, // <-- Same but for glyph charsets
	wait, // <-- Ulitity async function, that can be used to wait some time
} from 'glitched-writer'

Presets

To use one of the available presets, You can simply write it's name when creating writer, in the place of options. Available presets as for now:

• default - Loaded automatically, featured on the GIF up top.

• nier - Imitating the way text was appearing in the NieR: Automata's UI.

• typewriter - One letter at a time, only slightly glitched.

• terminal - Imitating being typed by a machine or a computer.

• zalgo - Inspired by the "zalgo" or "cursed text", Ghost characters mostly includes the unicode combining characters, which makes the text glitch vertically.

• neo - Recreated: Justin Windle's "Text Scramble Effect"

new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, 'nier')

Importing preset objects

You can import the option object of mentioned presets and tweak them, as well as some glyph sets.

import { presets, glyphs } from 'glitched-writer'

new GlitchedWriter(htmlElement, presets.typewriter)

Customizing options

Types and defaults:

{
//	name    [min   , max   ] | const   // default
	steps?: [number, number] | number, // [1, 8]
	interval?: [number, number] | number, // [60, 170]
	initialDelay?: [number, number] | number, // [0, 2000]
	changeChance?: number, // 0.6
	ghostChance?: number, // 0.2
	maxGhosts?: number, // '0.2'
	glyphs?: string | string[] | Set<string>, // glyphs.full + glyphs.zalgo
	glyphsFromString?: boolean, // false
	startFrom?: 'matching' | 'previous' | 'erase', // 'matching'
	oneAtATime?: boolean, // false
	html?: boolean, // false
	letterize?: boolean, // false
	fillSpace?: boolean // true
}

Options Description

Range values will result in random values for each step for every letter.

Ghost are "glitched letters" that gets rendered randomly in the time of writing, but aren't part of final string.

• steps - Number of minimum steps it takes one letter to reach it's goal one. Set to 0 if you want them to change to right letter in one step. (int)

• interval - Interval between each step, for every letter. (int: ms)

• initialDelay - first delay each letter must wait before it starts working (int: ms)

• changeChance - Percentage chance for letter to change to glitched one (from glyphs) (p: 0-1)

• ghostChance - Percentage chance for ghost letter to appear (p: 0-1)

• maxGhosts - Maximal number of ghosts to occur

  • int - (eg. 15) -> this will be the limit.
  • float - (eg. 0.25) -> Limit = maxGhosts * goalString.length

• glyphs - A set of characters that can appear as ghosts or letters can change into them

• glyphsFromString - If you want to add letters from written string to the glyph charset

• startFrom - Decides on witch algorithm to use.

  • 'matching' - Will scan starting and goal string for matching characters and will try to build character map from that.
  • 'previous' - Wont do any matching, just converts starting string into character map.
  • 'erase' - First Erases entire string and then writes from blank space.

• oneAtATime - If writing should take place from left-to-right, letter-by-letter or normally: all-at-once.

• html - Potentially dangerous option. If true, written string will be injected as html, not text content. It provides advanced text formating with html tags and more. But be sure to not enable it on user-provided content.

• letterize - Experimental option. Instead of injecting written text to "textContent" or "innerHTML", it appends every letter of that text as a child element. Then changing textContent of that span to current letter. It gives a lot of styling possibilities, as you can style ghosts, letters, and whole chars seperately, depending on current writer and char state.

• fillSpace - Normally if letter gets erased it actually gets replaced with space instead - to make words appear from and disappear into space, rather then sticking to the rest of the words. Set to false if you want to disable this.

Links:

• GitHub

• npm

• JSDelivr

• Codepen DEMO