Quickly create fortune databases out of your favorite (out-of-copyright) books and texts!

Fortunes.md

Fortune is a unix utility

1. Download the plain-text of your favorite book :
   • eg - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11
2. Name the file what you want the fortune command to invoke
   • eg alice
3. Change line endings from DOS to unix :
   • :set ff=unix in vim
4. Delete the preamble and license at the end
   • (while respecting it)
5. Delete all the chapter titles
   • :g/CHAPTER*/d in vim
6. Fix newline discrepancy
   • :%s/\n\n\n/\r\r/g with increasing number of \ns until nothing matches (let me know if there's a better way)
7. Add % signs to separate paragraphs
   • :%s/\n\n/\r\r%\r\r/g
   • This could also be used to add author names/ book titles to each quote
8. Randomize access to the file using strfile
   • strfile alice this should give you alice.dat
9. Copy the fortunes to the right spot!
   • cp alice* /usr/share/games/fortune on FreeBSD
10. Enjoy!
    • $fortune alice