Shortcat is a very simple encoding scheme to make bytes (thus computer programs) into pleasing Unicode tweets, IMs, etc. #demoscene
Encoder: cat x.prg | perl -pe 'binmode STDOUT,":utf8";tr/\x00-\xff/\x{2500}-\x{25ff}/;' > x.txt #demoscene
Decoder: cat x.txt | perl -pe 's/[\x00-\x7f]//g;s/\xe2(.)(.)[^\xe2]*/chr((ord($1)-148)*64+ord($2)-128)/eg;' > x.prg #demoscene
To decode, copy the Shortcat string to a new text file, save it, decode. ASCII (incl. spaces & newlines) will be ignored #demoscene
When decoding, don't include other Unicode besides the Shortcat string in your selection #demoscene
Add a hashtag (e.g., #c64) and/or other info (e.g., SYS4096) to help people run the program. That's it. Nanointros everywhere! #demoscene
For example: ━┈┋┈┊─▞┲┰┶┱───┠▁◿▎┠◐▎┡◐▽┦┈▝┇┄▩┋▝┇◘◨◠┙◐◰╠┓┈┏┒└┃━└┮┠┈┅┌┌┏┬┠─┐━┒└┙┡ #c64 RUN #demoscene