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Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

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Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#61

Post by playpause »

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

This is amazing. It's cool how you can drag the legibility slider up and down while it's writing and it responds live. It looks the most realistic to me when I alternate between high and low legibility, especially with certain styles like #3.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#62

Post by zimpenfish »

sago wrote: post #26

How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Sadly, the screenshot looks obviously artificial to me. Like handwriting fonts, I'd be very surprised if anybody thought it was really handwritten. It's not open source (because it is my handwriting (because my progressive MS means I can't do it manually)), but here's my hack: https:/…

> Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each?

As an anecdata, Alfred Wainwright did all his books like that (and justified the text, to boot.)

cf https://www.ramblers.org.uk/-/media/Images/Walk%20magazine/F...

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#63

Post by zimpenfish »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #52
smabie wrote: post #43

Is this different than a font?

Can a font pick randomly between different versions of the same glyph? I know a font can define unique ligatures for every character combo, but that would still mean the same combos like "fi" always look the same. Nice thing about this low-tech solution is that it can be trivially scaled up to introduce its own ligatures yet pick from them randomly, just at the expense of chore work (making the images). Of course, at…

> Can a font pick randomly between different versions of the same glyph?

In theory, yes, OpenType Contextual Alternates can do this.

See "Introducing variety" on this page: https://www.typenetwork.com/news/article/opentype-at-work-co...

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#64

Post by mushishi »

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

Hi, I like this, and found your project at Github. Could you add licence to your project, please! https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting-synthesis

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#66

Post by sago »

zimpenfish wrote: post #62
sago wrote: post #26

How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Sadly, the screenshot looks obviously artificial to me. Like handwriting fonts, I'd be very surprised if anybody thought it was really handwritten. It's not open source (because it is my handwriting (because my progressive MS means I can't do it manually)), but here's my hack: https:/…

> Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? As an anecdata, Alfred Wainwright did all his books like that (and justified the text, to boot.) cf https://www.ramblers.org.uk/-/media/Images/Walk%20magazine/F...

I love his books. Gorgeous.

I think this was more his graphic design style for his books. As you say, the justification shows there's nothing impromptu about it. Here's how he wrote his letters, notes, drafts and so on: https://www.grough.co.uk/lib/img/editorial/wainwrightmanuscr...

I'm not splitting hairs on what 'handwriting' means. I'm fascinated by that era when books with complex text/visual interactions were far cheaper to create by hand. An example of an old magic book I have: https://imgur.com/a/8Bu9ML1 It's hard to beat Wainwright though.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#67

Post by laszlokorte »

sjv wrote: post #5

Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even methods which incorporate random variations don't hide these artifacts sufficiently well. In my opinion, the only way to generate synthetic handwriting which is convincingly real is to use statistical methods (i.e. machine learning) to model…

No matter what style/legibility/text I try the line always just drops as if my computer had a faint [1]

[1]: https://imgur.com/a/IgAV1ef

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#68

Post by chris_st »

sjv wrote: post #14
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really neat! I love how it looks, and the selection of styles. A couple of times, using Style #2, it generated a bunch of loops at the end: Text: "The quick brown fox, etc" Image: https://pasteboard.co/Jn0O17a.png Still - nifty, and fun to play with. Makes me want to find an application / excuse to use it :)

The model was trained on a relatively small dataset which has few occurrences of the letter x, almost none of which are in cursive. As you've found, asking the model to write out an x in a cursive style can totally derail the generation process.

There must not have been many "z"s either -- "quartz" failed as much as "fox" in my tries. Still, nice work!

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#69

Post by sago »

senko wrote: post #57
sago wrote: post #26

How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Sadly, the screenshot looks obviously artificial to me. Like handwriting fonts, I'd be very surprised if anybody thought it was really handwritten. It's not open source (because it is my handwriting (because my progressive MS means I can't do it manually)), but here's my hack: https:/…

> How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Most of the people I know do this. Myself, I have never ever written with joined letters except when required to in school. I consider it a leftover from the era of fountain pens (which are terrible UX for me as a left-handed writing LTR languages). Even my signature is based on sep…

Fascinating. Thanks for responding.

Can I ask what age-group you/they are? And it sounds like you had to write joined-up at school. Why would you stop? Isn't it so much faster?

I went to a snooty high school where fountain pens were compulsory (this was the 80s, not the 50s!). But writing was taught joined-up from pencils in infant school, from when you knew your whole alphabet. It never occurred to me to not join. It would have looked like a very small child's writing. Interesting though that has changed.

My wife is a grade school teacher, and disagrees, but I totally think that teaching handwriting is a waste of time. I wasn't anywhere near as fast writing as typing. I would have been much more productive with a laptop in school.

Anyway. I'm rambling now. Thanks for the response! I stand corrected.

Re: Show HN: Handwritten.js – Convert typed text to realistic handwriting

#70

Post by senko »

sago wrote: post #69
senko wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Most of the people I know do this. Myself, I have never ever written with joined letters except when required to in school. I consider it a leftover from the era of fountain pens (which are terrible UX for me as a left-handed writing LTR languages). Even my signature is based on sep…

Fascinating. Thanks for responding. Can I ask what age-group you/they are? And it sounds like you had to write joined-up at school. Why would you stop? Isn't it so much faster? I went to a snooty high school where fountain pens were compulsory (this was the 80s, not the 50s!). But writing was taught joined-up from pencils in infant school, from when you knew your whole alphabet. It never occurred to me to not join. I…

I'm 41 - yeah we had learned both joined and "printed" (as we'd call them) letters, with the intention that for handwriting you'd use joined, but it was only required, for a bit, in lower grades in Croatian classes (ie. that'd be English classes in the US/UK/etc).

That was some 33 years ago but I have an 8yr old now and that part of the curriculum is basically the same.

Both then and now kids only need use pencils for this, thankfully :)

For myself, written joined up is more effort and slower than just individual letters. I don't know if that's due to less practice in it, or due to left handed needing to push the pen(cil) more when writing in that style.

I'm way faster touch typing (tho not on a screen keyboard!). If it were up to me, kids today would learn the easiest handwriting method (I believe that's individual letters) and typing, instead of two ways of writing.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Always interesting to find how somr things I take for granted are done/seem elsewhere!

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