How much does it cost?
It's $16, which includes shipping.
Where's the "is" button?
Use the "be" button to get is, are, am, was, were, being, and been.
How do I change what the "pronoun" button does?
Some word types lend themselves to randomness
better than others, so
Go to the Edit menu, select Options, then the "Left-click" tab. Besides pronouns, six other
categories may also be toggled.
No matter how it's set, you can still get an alphabetical list by right-clicking.
Can I look forward to a Mac version anytime soon?
Unfortunately, that's not in the plans at present. It was written in Delphi and
is loaded with Windows-specific code, so it would be hard to port to another platform.
How do I uninstall it?
Click on the Windows Start button, then "Programs," then "Icon Poet," then "Uninstall Icon Poet."
I tried to install it from the CD-ROM, but it acts like it's still the demo version.
Install it again, making sure that the
In the unlikely event that none of those drive letters can hold a CD, copy the very
large .WAV file from the
"Root directory," by the way, just means it's not in a folder.
Is it only for poetry? I'm more interested in writing short stories.
People tend to use Icon Poet for poetry, but it overcomes
clichéd thinking in a way that is equally valuable for writers of prose.
We hope that sooner or later some mad genius writes
an entire novel using
How did you ever come up with this idea?
The first primitive ancestor of Icon Poet actually dates back to 1988.
I had created a Rimbaud-inspired poetry generator, A Season in RAM,
and was convinced that machines could produce flashes of poetic brilliance
(in addition to volumes of leaden gibberish). Unfortunately, the computer can't
tell the difference;
it takes a human to recognize what works and what doesn't. One day the
idea struck me to keep the randomness but introduce an element of
interactivity, and
That first version was pretty crude. There was no way to load, save,
or edit. When text scrolled off the top of the screen, it was gone.
I put it aside to work on other projects, and a number
of years passed before I looked at it again. When I did, I was
surprised at how entertaining I still found it.
Icon Poet has undergone several total re-writes since then.
With the current Windows version, I think it's a fun toy that can also be
a serious improvisational writing tool.