[Tex/LaTex] The effect of the anonymous letter

Question

I'm trying to create an effect as if the text is made up of letters cut from magazines and newspapers and even the same words had different style. It is necessary that each letter in the word had a random parameters (in a predetermined range):

• fonts (from a few pre-selected)
• font size
• turn
• above or below the baseline for a few pt

Of course, all this can be set manually, but it will take a long time. How can this be automated?

Answer 1

I only know about a non-LaTeX solution using PostScript. Because PostScript is a programming language it can randomly pick fonts while typesetting a text. A program ransom.ps using that effect was once published by Diomidis Spinellis on Usenet. The description reads:

This is a small postscript program you can use to create ransom notes. Enter the text you want between the brackets at the beginning of the script and send the whole file to a postscript printer. The text will be printed using many different fonts, sizes, orientations, and styles. You can modify the margins and the fonts used, by modifying the source.

Executing the PostScript code ransom.ps gave me the following result: