Using CipherClerk's Applet

This document contains images of the applet/application. Clicking on the buttons does therefore have no effect. Note that on your system the applet/application may look different, while the functionality should be the same.

Step 1: Entering the text

When the applet (or the application) starts, it presents the following dialog:

You should read the text and press the Next button. You will find a dialog like the one given below:

Please replace the given text by the text you would like to process. Whether operations like copy and paste are available or not depends on your system. When you've entered the text, press the Next button to continue.

Step 2: Choose what to do

Now you should choose either to encipher or decipher the text entered before.

Step 3: Choose a cipher

Simply choose one cipher from the list. Simply? Well, there may be some pitfalls. In the depicted case there is one more cipher at the and of the list. Moving the pointing device doesn't help. To select the hidden cipher I have to select the last visible one and press the arrow-down. Then the list scrolls upwards hiding the first cipher...

After selecting a cipher setup it's parameters. To do so, press the Next button. The result depends on the cipher you've chosen. For example, it might look like:

Most ciphers require a key word which may be a phrase or any other text, too. Not all ciphers will accept all keys. If the key is not acceptable, the buttons Next and Finish will be dimmed. You may use the Clear button to erase the key word field.

Not all ciphers may use all letters. Normally the use of non-standard alphabets arises from the way a cipher works. CipherClerk's Applet allows you to choose any alphabet the cipher can use to operate and doesn't offer illegal choices. At present, the following alphabets are available:

Remember that CipherClerk's Applet implements classical ciphers. The ciphers have been invented long before ACSII became popular. The two 36 letter alphabets differ in the way mixed versions of them are generated: For the first one, the letters A-Z are mixed and then the numbers 1..9,0 are inserted after the letters A..I,J. For the second, the numbers 0...9 are appended after the letters A...Z and the resulting string is mixed.

Various ciphers will offer additional parameters. These parameters will be described along with the ciphers. Note that the setup of parameters always refers to the enciphering process - even if you actually want to decipher, setup the cipher exactly in the same way as if you'd like to encipher!

When finished, press the Next button to continue. You may press the Finish button too. This would skip the next step where you may set up the output.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

Obviously, the processes of enciphering and deciphering may be different. Nevertheless you do not need to worry about this - even if some specific setup of a cipher might suggest to do so. CipherClerk's Applet will handle all this stuff. However you should be aware the all the options are considered from the point of view of the enciphering process.

Step 4: Choose the output format

Usually cipher text is rearranged into groups of five letters. By default, CipherClerk's Applet does this and placed eight such groups in a line. You may change the number of groups in each line as well as the number of letters in a group.

If you regroup the result, you may have CipherClerk's Applet placing a single blank separating the characters by checking Separate Characters Within A Group. Besides regrouping, you may configure CipherClerk's Applet to conserve the text structure:

If you want to conserve the structure of the text while removing punctuation, select Keep Textstructure or select Keep Structure And Other Characters if you want to keep punctuation. By default, all letters are capitalized. By selecting Keep Capitalization you may conserve the capitalization of the text.

You may want to check Emit Cipher Info and /or Emit Input Text so that CipherClerk's Applet will append a description how the text was processed and/or the input text. Finally,

As you might already have guessed, press the Next or Finish button to continue.

Step 5: Have fun with the result

The Finish button, whenever enabled, will directly move to the result. Now you may select and copy the result into another document.

The Restart button brings you back to the begin so that you can modify the text to process or process another text.

How CipherClerk's Applet processes a text

CipherClerk's Applet processes a text in the following manner:
  1. A copy of the text to process is made. This copy contains only those characters of the plain text that are present in the chosen alphabet. If the alphabet requires to replace some letters by others, this is done too. If a ciphers requires that all words are separated by a single space, this is handled by CipherClerk as well.
  2. A copy of the key word prepared in the same way.
  3. The copy of the text is processed by the selected cipher using the copy of the key word.
  4. Depending on the chosen output options, the resulting text is either reformatted into groups or the text structure is reconstructed: CipherClerk iterates over the original input text. If a space or line separator is found, it is emitted. If a letter of the chosen alphabet is found, the next letter of the result text is emitted. If capitalization is to be conserved, the emitted letter is capital if the plain text letter is capital to. All other characters are emitted only if Keep Structure And Other Characters was chosen.
Please note that the alphabet for plain text and cipher text may be different. Provided that you've setup the parameters for the selected cipher correctly, CipherClerk's Applet will handle this for you.

To proceed, you may