A Picture That Paints Itself
How Could a Picture Possibly Paint Itself?
I can think of a couple of ways.
There’s an odd cookie (in a good way) programming language called Piet in which programs are represented as images. I suppose it’d be possible to write a quine in Piet. Could be fun, even!
But you don’t have a Piet interpreter in your pocket.
So let’s go with QR Codes.
What’s a QR Code?
Go ahead, change the text! Read it from your phone’s camera! Isn’t modern technology javascript magical?
You can put whatever you like in a QR code. Unfortunately, so can I.
I could put this blog post’s URL in one manually. After all, I already know what the URL will be.
But That’s No Fun
That’s not a question. Also you are correct.
Here’s a small html snippet:
<script src="https://unpkg.com/easyqrcodejs"></script>
<div id="qrcode"/>
<script>
new QRCode(document.getElementById("qrcode"),
{ text: window.location.href })
</script>(I mean, you’re supposed to declare <!DOCTYPE html>, but sue me.)
You can host that anywhere and it will give you a QR code of it’s own page. I’m hosting it here. View source if you don’t believe me.
I definitely have not posted it on my nearest bus stop.
Use it as 404 page, I dare you. Nothing could go wrong, who could possibly complain?
That’s Quite a Quine, though, is it?
No, not by any definition I can think of. But it is distinctly quinier (it’s a word because I say it is) than simply using literal value.
Got a Better Idea?
If only there existed a method of writing a whole webpage in a URL.
That would be cool, wouldn’t it? Big shame it doesn’t exist.
That Couldn’t Possibly Work!
Again, with the not-a-question.
