Perl module wanted

[Al Tobey]

What you want will be pretty easy with GD.  It is available on just
about every default linux install.   I believe you can get it on
ActiveState, too.  You may need to emply ImageMagick to get your bmp &
gif files since GD only outputs jpg & png due to patent issues on gif.

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LD/LDS/GD-2.06.tar.gz
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LD/LDS/GD-2.06.readme
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/M/MV/MVERB/GDTextUtil-0.83.tar.gz
http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/M/MV/MVERB/GDTextUtil-0.83.readme

-Al Tobey

On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 11:08, Steve Poling wrote:
> Hey guys, it's me lowering the bar again.
> 
> I'm looking for a Perl module that inputs a short bit of text and then outputs a bitmap
> image thereof. Anybody know if such a critter exists? (Anyone have experience with 
> Image::Imlib2?)
> 
> I have an insidious plan for thwarting spammers and this capability is the first step. If
> you have ever purchased something via PayPal, you'll note that they make an image of some
> authorization numbers and ask you to type in the authorization code. This prevents crooks
> from writing programs that "scrape" the authorization code automatically.
> 
> Why do I want to mess with this? I want to apply this technique to personal email
> addresses. Goto http://steve.poling.info and you'll see my personal email address rendered
> in a hard-to-scrape format. (Hehe, I hyperlink a sacrificial "spam-target" address in the
> mailto target.) If I can get this module to work, I'll setup a freebie service to give my
> friends nifty little hard-to-scrape gif files of their email addresses.
> 
> My module would do this:
> 1) convert input text string to a bitmap.
> 2) randomly jizzle the individual letter positions
> 3) xor a patterned background
> 4) blast some random lines atop the letters
> 5) generate a bmp, gif, png output file.
> 6) mail the file to the specified address.
> 7) sell the address to spammers???? Horrors, NO!
> 
> I figure there is probably an image processing Perl module that does most all these steps
> individually. Does anybody know of any?
> 
> I'd rather not do this in C++ as a matter of principle.
> 
> smiles and cheers,
> 
> steve
> 



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