Live data from Hacker News

Backtrack-Free Cursive

mmapped.blog

111–120 of 133 posts

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#111

This is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read . The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text. In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.

> In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing. Author here! It really depends on what you write. When I write something for others to read, I type it or (on special occasions) write it one letter at a time with a calligraphy pen. I’m the only intended reader for almost all of my handwriting (personal journal, article drafts, exercises, and notes). In this setting, it’s much m…

> When I write something for others to read, I type it or (on special occasions) write it one letter at a time with a calligraphy pen.

> I’m the only intended reader for almost all of my handwriting

More power to you then, and thank you!

If you're writing almost exclusively for yourself, none of what I said applies at all. You'll be much more familiar with your own handwriting and your particular cursive style, together with some memory of what you wrote.

All of my comments were exclusively related to people who inflict idiosyncratic handwriting on others and expect them to read it. (For instance, the stereotype of doctors' handwriting, which is even worse for being in a high-stakes setting with a high cost to mistakes.)

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#112
post #4

> Only й and э require two strokes Wouldn't the ф as well? > [for the x], I draw two mirrored c’s Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception? For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.

> Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception? > For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c. I was taught script in the US and Italy as a child, and never learned it like this.

I have seen it in older texts somewhere.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#113
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illinois still requires cursive as part of their elementary education curriculum (although it’s an outlier in that it also requires PE in every year of K-12 education and also for public university degrees¹ (maybe also private?) as well as speech in both high school and again for a public university degree. ⸻ 1. Typically this would only apply or a bachelor’s and maybe associate’s degree, but when I got my teaching c…

Wait, PE is not mandatory in US schools?!? This is ridiculous.

Illinois has a daily PE mandate, where other states it’s usually 3 days per week of PE

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#115

As a USAian and an Old, I learned the Zaner-Bloser script in school - a cursive script that tries to minimize pen lifts, but still has "backtracks" as this article calls them, for j, i, and x. It uses a lot of the same kind of loops that this script uses, just for the simpler problem of joins. The downside of the Zaner-Bloser system, as well as Palmer and anything that derives from Spencerian cursive, is that when wr…

I am afraid to ask what the parameters are of "an Old", for fear that I may fall into said category.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#116
As a guy who writes software for a living, I rarely put pen or pencil to paper. I type out everything, and print it if I need it. I have nice and simple note taking and list making sites for myself on the www, so that takes care of a lot of what people write for. I am odd, though, in the fact that I LOVE a good pen, and I have several nice ones that I never use.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#117
I never liked writing cursive. Then i tried a fancy pen once and it was so much better. I suspect cheap ballpoint pen killed cursive as much as anything else did.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#118
post #106

Using the term "backtracking" feels somewhat confusing, because it seems like most of the "fixed" letters they propose use what I would find more intuitively described as backtracking: having to trace back the exact path used to get to a given point in order to get back to a previous point to start drawing a new mark from. I think I'd be less confused by a term like "annotations" for what they're talking about.

Yeah, I originally expected this to be about a cursive variant which could be plotted as a single-valued function or something.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#119
post #118
post #106

Using the term "backtracking" feels somewhat confusing, because it seems like most of the "fixed" letters they propose use what I would find more intuitively described as backtracking: having to trace back the exact path used to get to a given point in order to get back to a previous point to start drawing a new mark from. I think I'd be less confused by a term like "annotations" for what they're talking about.

Yeah, I originally expected this to be about a cursive variant which could be plotted as a single-valued function or something.

That's a fun way of thinking about it! I hadn't considered that

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#120
post #51

I am not sure what country the author is in, because when I learned to write English in school (decades ago, and it was the language of instruction) very few letters required backtrack, pretty much only ‘i’ and ‘j’. I just looked at an image of the US Declaration of Independence and the same is true (the ‘t’ has a wiggle in the middle). Other languages are similar: for German if you look at either Kurrent or Sütterli…

How do you do t without backtracking?

If you look at the example I gave, the US Declaration of Independence, you’ll see the crossbar of the t is little transverse wiggle, so you draw the pen up to the top, then as you descend you make a brief horizontal twitch on the way down. The resulting crossbar is quite brief, almost just a bump on each side, but clear.

If you take a pen and draw this t a few times you’ll see it’s easy to draw and quite legible. I had no trouble reading the USDoI

Post reply on HN