Friday, December 12, 2008

Flip HowTo

This is a very old idea, which I looked first at this site, and hence this post may not be that new, in terms of freshness of content. However, its always interesting :-).

Goto this site:
http://www.revfad.com/flip.html

type something there and you will get like this:
:sıɥʇ ǝʞıl ʇǝƃ llıʍ noʎ puɐ ǝɹǝɥʇ ƃuıɥʇǝɯos ǝdʎʇ


(-: ǝɯɐs ǝɥʇ ǝɔuǝıɹǝdxǝ oʇ ǝɔuɐɥɔ ǝuo sı sıɥʇ '(ǝɯ ǝʞıl) ǝɟıl ɹnoʎ uı sʇdıɹɔs ʇɟǝl oʇ ʇɥƃıɹ pɐǝɹ ʇou ǝʌɐɥ noʎ ɟı ˙ʎsɐǝ os ʇou sʇı lɐɹǝuǝƃ uı ɥƃnoɥʇ uǝʌǝ 'llǝʍ sɹǝʇɔɐɹɐɥɔ uʍop ǝpısdn ǝɥʇ pɐǝɹ sʎɐʍlɐ uɐɔ noʎ 'ǝsnɐɔǝq unɟ sı sıɥʇ

Technical details:
This is possible because of unicode. Unicode has a huge set of character set. People were able to find a similar, corresponding upside down character for each character in the english alphabet.

If you are interested in what those characters are, here it is:
This is copy pasted straight from the revfad.com/flip.html page's source code.
var flipTable = {
a : '\u0250',
b : 'q',
c : '\u0254', //open o -- from pne
d : 'p',
e : '\u01DD',
f : '\u025F', //from pne
g : '\u0183',
h : '\u0265',
i : '\u0131', //from pne
j : '\u027E',
k : '\u029E',
//l : '\u0283',
m : '\u026F',
n : 'u',
r : '\u0279',
t : '\u0287',
v : '\u028C',
w : '\u028D',
y : '\u028E',
'.' : '\u02D9',
'[' : ']',
'(' : ')',
'{' : '}',
'?' : '\u00BF', //from pne
'!' : '\u00A1',
"\'" : ',',
'<' : '>',
'_' : '\u203E',
';' : '\u061B',
'\u203F' : '\u2040',
'\u2045' : '\u2046',
'\u2234' : '\u2235',
'\r' : '\n' //thank you, Yeeliberto
}

So as long as you have all these languages in your unicode font, you are really good to go in terms of getting things done (i mean upside down). If you have a complex language script (like say tamil or hindi), such a feat would be difficult, since tamil has horizontal lines at the bottom when character is flipped (think க as ab example). so its difficult to find an equivalent character. Same with hindi ( think of का - or for that matter any char as there is a line at the top for every character).

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