A simple Processing sketch that writes a string array to screen horizontally, with the font size of each element changing depending on the tweeted frequency of that element.

HorizontalTweets

// use textWidth(yourword)... this function returns how wide in px a word will be

/************** scripted by James Heffernan September 2013 *******************/

// to experiment with this sketch in processing you will need to make your own version of the "ArialMT" font.



String[] words={"tree","bus","car","building","church","ground",
"landscape","roof","dog","cat","owl","pea","carrot","frog","hat","cloud","sky","grass","dawn","tree",
"sandwich","parrot","night","sun","moon","flower"
};

int[] tweetV={2200,3000,1000,545,660,1000,1200,2000,2800,3200,650,800,
3200,1900,3000};

int[] wordlength = new int [words.length];

PFont font;
float fontSize;
float ratio;
float wordWidth = 0;
int lineNo = 0;
int maxV;
int xpos = 50;
int ypos;
int wordOnLine;


void setup(){
  background(255);
  size(600,600);
  fill(0); 
  
  smooth();
  font = loadFont("ArialMT-48.vlw");
  textFont(font,48);
  textAlign(LEFT);

}

void draw(){

  maxV = max(tweetV);
  
   for(int j = 0; j<tweetV.length; j++)
    {
     
      // divide each tvalue[] by max for unique ratio  
      ratio = float(tweetV[j])/maxV;
  
      
      wordlength[j] = int(textWidth(words[j]));
      
      
      
      // if the width of the text exceeds 450 increment the line number
      if(xpos > 450){
       
        lineNo = lineNo + 1; 
         xpos = 50;
        //xpos = xpos + ((wordlength[j])+5);
        
      }
     
      
      // if the line number increments so does the yposition
      if(lineNo == 0){
      
      ypos= 100;
      }
      
      if(lineNo == 1){
      
      ypos= 150;
      }
      
      if(lineNo == 2){
      
      ypos= 200;
      }
      
      if(lineNo == 3){
      
      ypos= 250;
      }
      

      //xpos = xpos + int(textWidth(words[j])+1);
      text(words[j],xpos,ypos);
      xpos = (xpos+40) + ((wordlength[j]));
      
      textSize(ratio*56);
       
       //50*(i+1)
    }
    
    
   // fill(255,0,0);
      //text(wordlength[0],width/2,height/2);
      noLoop();


}