Turn your handwriting into a font • Hacker News Board

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#21

Post by OJFord » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

  > I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd ...

Please write an eBook reader.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#22

Post by rzzzt » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

I like the idea! Also, when the reader navigates to a bookmarked page, an old store receipt should fall out.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#23

Post by TheRealPomax » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #4

Are there potential security concerns here? I know not many people use handwritten letters any more, but this potentially gives this company a complete sample of your handwriting, which they can then use for whatever purpose they want.

true commercial handwriting fonts are already way more advanced than this. https://medium.com/message/how-to-tell-when-a-robot-has-writ...

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#24

Post by davis » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

corysama wrote: post #2

Has anyone managed to assemble a workable font based on Dijkstra's handwriting? Last I checked, there we few attempts but they were all missing characters. http://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-handw...

Thanks for sharing my post. Feel free to ask any questions.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#25

Post by gkya » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

rzzzt wrote: post #22

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

I like the idea! Also, when the reader navigates to a bookmarked page, an old store receipt should fall out.

Or a dried rose, depending on the genre.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#26

Post by toxican » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #21

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

> I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd ... Please write an eBook reader.

"My dearest eBook reader..."

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#27

Post by eternalban » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

> .. slightly different ...

https://handwriting.io/

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#28

Post by disordinary » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #20

One of the charms of a printed book is the imperfection of the fonts and the impressions of the fonts. Each 'a' impression is slightly different - maybe a little higher, a little lower, a little blotchier, etc. But if I read an ebook, the letters are always identical. I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd use a font that mimics the imperfections in printed works. I'd have maybe 20-30 different 'a' i…

Why not just modify the glyphs programmatically on draw so every character is unique?

I thought of writing a word processor where each glyph created a bump map so as you type the characters are slightly indented as if stroked by a type writer.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#29

Post by iamcreasy » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

jenhsun wrote: post #3

corysama wrote: post #2

Has anyone managed to assemble a workable font based on Dijkstra's handwriting? Last I checked, there we few attempts but they were all missing characters. http://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-handw...

http://ufonts.com/fonts/dijkstra.html

I see the font without any ad. Using Chrome + uBlock Origin.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#30

Post by khedoros » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

I've made a font of my handwriting in the past. I used a similar template, scanned it, and used a TrueType font creation program. It auto-converted the image into vectorized curves, A selected the parts of each curve, and put each glyph into a box. In each box, you could change the letter spacing, kerning on all the sides, alignment of the pieces (dot over the 'i', for instance).

I went through probably a dozen iterations, tweaking the spacing and alignment until it looked fairly natural. Now, I wonder if there was a way to automate that, or if the fonts created with this site take a little manual tweaking as a final polishing step.