Offline lorem ipsum generator

Question

What would be a good offline alternative of the online Lipsum generator? It's frustrating when I'm not online and need some placeholder text for testing purpose. A CLI utility would be ideal, so that I can tailor the output to fit my needs.

See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1356765/online-lorem-ipsum-generators for online lorem ipsum generators — Spoike, Aug 31 '09 at 18:30

score 17 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:40

17

In Office 2007 apps, you can type in

=lorem(n)

with n equaling the number of paragraphs of lorem ipsum you would like generated.

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:40

shadit

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In word, =rand(n) returns English text – rodrigo-silveira Jan 17 '13 at 06:10
O_0 now ain't that fantastic!? – Ulf Gjerdingen Jun 02 '16 at 12:27

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:40

8

If you have python available, google code has a CLI generator.

http://code.google.com/p/lorem/

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:40

Matt

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Imran · Answer 3 · 2010-11-19T13:11:20.073

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Django's lipsum addon seemed pretty straightforward. As I didn't want to install python just to run this script, I ported it to php.

Here's my PHP version:

http://pastebin.com/eA3nsJ83

edited Nov 19 '10 at 13:11

answered Sep 18 '08 at 22:38

Imran

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:38

5

Generate a long section online. Save it to a txt file. Refer to txt file when offline.

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:38

John Sheehan

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Ya, how often does Lorem ipsum change that you need a generator anyway? – ProfK Jul 25 '09 at 09:28
1

Generators come in handy when you need it in specific number of characters, words, paragraphs and etc. – Brian Kim Aug 17 '10 at 22:57
1

You don't want a single fixed text if you want random text that isn't always exactly same, for example, if you want to track where it came from. – bart Nov 19 '10 at 10:40

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:41

4

Textmate has a built in snippet to print this

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

From

lorem

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:41

Teifion

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You need to press to generate the text. – Devin Reams Sep 18 '08 at 17:46
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That is awesome. This is why I love TextMate. – Kyle Cronin Sep 19 '08 at 02:58

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 19 '10 at 10:43

3

I think you could use a Markov Text Generator, fed from the original Lorem Ipsum text. That way you should be able to find an implementation in any language you prefer.

You can try out if that will do, online, here.

answered Nov 19 '10 at 10:43

bart

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it seems both links have gone 404 since since the answer was posted – ssc Sep 22 '16 at 14:18

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:38

2

Not sure about a command line version but there is a firefox extension that does Lorem Ipsum: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2064

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:38

hacama

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It gets the lipsum text from the same site I linked in my question – Imran Sep 18 '08 at 17:42

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:44

Just checked and found that it pulls text from the website so it wouldn't work online... sorry about that, how about this though:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import random

try:
    n = int(sys.argv[1])
except:
    print 'Usage: %s num-words' % sys.argv[0]

words = open('/usr/share/dict/words').readlines()
for i in range(n):
    print words[random.randrange(0, len(words))][:-1],

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered May 04 '12 at 13:06

1

For completeness: a Perl module to do this is called Text::Lorem, and there is also a Text::Lorem::More.

answered May 04 '12 at 13:06

Juan A. Navarro

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score 1 · Answer 10 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

1

To make Juan’s answer more complete, there is fine wrapper to Text::Lorem module. If you’re on debian:

$> sudo apt-get install libtext-lorem-perl

And after this just type

$> lorem

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Feb 06 '14 at 22:16

hurufu

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score 1 · Answer 11 · answered Jun 25 '17 at 16:41

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There's a nice generator available from homebrew if you're on macOS. brew install lorem. My default python distribution is python 3 which caused a syntax error for the print statements. After fixing that, it was quite nice for my purposes.

answered Jun 25 '17 at 16:41

K. Shores

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score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:39

1

Word 2007 will produce a block of placeholder text when you type in =rand() and this hit the return/enter key. If you're looking for simple placeholder text, I'd go ahead and generate a bunch ahead of time and stick it in a text file.

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:39

Orion Adrian

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score 1 · Answer 13 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:39

1

Django includes the {% lorem %} tag as part of the contrib addons. It shouldn't be too hard to make a command-line version. Here's the source.

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:39

Jim

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Hank · Answer 14 · 2008-09-18T20:13:03.833

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On http://www.lipsum.com there are links to several offline Lorem Ipsum generators, about halfway down the frontpage. Or you could write one of your own in a matter of minutes.

Edit: This isn't accurate, I wrongfully assumed all of the linked lorem ipsum generators were offline ones, not only the LaTeX one.

edited Sep 18 '08 at 20:13

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:40

Hank

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score 1 · Answer 15 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

1

If you are on linux and have these tools:

pdf2ps | ps2txt < yourarticlecollection/someresearchpaper.pdf

:)

Seiously, most of the time I just copy&paste from research papers and articles that interests me. They have good amount of text that show white rivers and sometimes as incomprehensible as "Lorem ipsum".

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:46

artificialidiot

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The whole point of lorem ipsum is that it *isn't* comprehensible text, so that you concentrate on the design rather than what is being said. – Jim Sep 18 '08 at 18:04

score 0 · Answer 16 · answered Dec 09 '21 at 07:55

The alternative is to use VS Code to generate dummy text within html tag. You can control how much text you want to generate. For example, type lorem10 then press Enter key it will generate 10 words of lorem text.

You can also generate a few paragraphs containing lorem text inside. For example, p*3>lorem5 will create 3 paragraphs each containing 5 words of lorem text.

score 0 · Answer 17 · answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:44

0

At the bottom of the lorem ipsum generator you will find links to the generator for other usage. My understanding is the following can be used offline:

But you may also find the following helpful:

WWW::Lipsum CPAN Module
Firefox Add-on
Dreamweaver Extension
GTK Lipsum
ActionScript3

Each of these, while requiring connectivity, reduce the load on the lipsum generator as they don't require loading the actual website.

answered Sep 18 '08 at 17:44

Devin Reams

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Thanks, but I really need a total offline solution. I did take a look at the Lipsum CPAN module before. It's rather nice, only if it worked offline... – Imran Sep 18 '08 at 17:48

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Sep 19 '08 at 02:52

0

Slightly off-topic: try to avoid using lorem ipsum for layout testing!

The letter frequencies in Latin are way different than in e.g. English or German. There's lots of 'i' and 'l', i.e. lots of narrow letters.

answered Sep 19 '08 at 02:52

Jörg W Mittag

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-1 could have been an ok answer if you provided an alternative. – o0'. Jul 17 '12 at 10:41

Offline lorem ipsum generator

18 Answers18