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Turn your handwriting into a font

myscriptfont.com

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Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#51

Post by sago »

WalterBright wrote: post #32
OJFord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've thought about it now and then, but the D compiler consumes all my efforts. I have emailed suggestions to Amazon, and so far they have implemented 0 of them, nor have they responded to any. Once all the diverse books are converted to ebooks, them all being rendered in the same perfect font on the ereader kinda lends them an off-putting sterility.

> them all being rendered in the same perfect font

That annoys me. Book typography is a sophisticated art. Selecting a typeface for a book is a skill, positioning it, sizing it and kerning it for that book makes a big difference.

Books all presented in the same way lose a lot of their character. Dickens shouldn't look like G R R Martin.

Sadly, its a bit of a first world problem, most people don't notice it, not consciously. They just get this sense that ebooks lack gravitas or character somehow.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#52

Post by WalterBright »

sago wrote: post #51
WalterBright wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about it now and then, but the D compiler consumes all my efforts. I have emailed suggestions to Amazon, and so far they have implemented 0 of them, nor have they responded to any. Once all the diverse books are converted to ebooks, them all being rendered in the same perfect font on the ereader kinda lends them an off-putting sterility.

> them all being rendered in the same perfect font That annoys me. Book typography is a sophisticated art. Selecting a typeface for a book is a skill, positioning it, sizing it and kerning it for that book makes a big difference. Books all presented in the same way lose a lot of their character. Dickens shouldn't look like G R R Martin. Sadly, its a bit of a first world problem, most people don't notice it, not consc…

Fortunately, storage space has gotten so cheap it is no problem storing page images rather than text. Even without the images, there are a number of things ereaders could do to render the text in a more booklike manner.

One thing that mystifies me is why there are no ereaders with a screen the exact size of a standard paperback. If I was god-emperor of ereaders, that'd be the first thing I'd demand my minions create.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#53

Post by dharma1 »

eternalban wrote: post #27
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/

Reminds me of the guy in Her. I guess this could be automated with a neural network - http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.html

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#54

Post by dharma1 »

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…

http://luc.devroye.org/randomizedfonts.html

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#55

Post by bazzargh »

disordinary wrote: post #28
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.

Back in the 90s, this was done using Type 3 fonts (which have full access to the postscript language). This 1995 paper, for example, describes a technique for generative, random handwriting from samples. http://luc.devroye.org/mcdougallpaper.pdf

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#56

Post by eternalban »

dharma1 wrote: post #53
eternalban wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. slightly different ... https://handwriting.io/

Reminds me of the guy in Her. I guess this could be automated with a neural network - http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.html

Segmentation is a very hard problem specially if based on paper samples.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#57

Post by dharma1 »

eternalban wrote: post #56
dharma1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the guy in Her. I guess this could be automated with a neural network - http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.html

Segmentation is a very hard problem specially if based on paper samples.

Ah, I mean automating the creation of handwritten notes, like handwriting.io does manually

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#58

Post by MatthewWilkes »

justinpombrio wrote: post #45
WalterBright wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should add that I buy paperbacks regularly, often paying more for them than the ebook. I then run 'em through the scanner and read the scanned book on my tablet. I just like the imperfect look of a scanned paperback page than the perfect ebooks. I also like the paperback formatting better than the auto-flow ebook layouts. I figure I get the best of ebook and hardcopy this way!

Plus then you own the scan and don't have to worry about DRM. > I then run 'em through the scanner Does that take a long time? Do you have a setup to make it faster than scanning page by page?

Is that legal in many jurisdictions? Format switching for music seems to go back and forth, I imagine this would be covered by the same rules.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#59

Post by gotodengo »

WalterBright wrote: post #40
mattparcher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize that you’re referring to traditionally-typed text, but Monotype was recently commissioned to design a typeface for the illustrator of Roald Dahl’s books, and they did indeed include alternates for each letter (along with variations in kerning): >…He selected four subtly different alternates for each character that, combined, would make the text look random enough to look authentic while keeping the glyph se…

That is a step in the right direction. My parents' handwriting was borderline illegible, so they took to typing letters on a manual typewriter. Typewriters suffering from all the problems of complex finicky mechanisms, and being a write-only medium, resulted in a pleasing quirkiness that is completely absent from email. Read enough typed text, and you begin to recognize a person's particular "hand" at the typewriter,…

I distinctly remember a scene from some random show years ago, in which a kid was selling fake school excuses.

The other kids were amazed that the "top quality" excuse even had the same off center 'e' as the typewriter the school nurse used.

Re: Turn your handwriting into a font

#60

Post by sshanky »

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 wonder if there would be value in simulating left and right hand pages on a single page view screen. I'm imagining something where you'd see the left page, and the crease between the pages rendered on the right edge of the screen, with a slice of the left edge of the text from the facing page visible. Turning the page would be rendered as a slide over to the right. The next page turn would show the page flipping to the left, combined with a slide back to the left page.

I think this is another tactile part of reading a novel: laying in bed balancing the book in your hand, holding the side you're not reading, then repositioning your hand when you start reading the right hand page.

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