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Turn your handwriting into a font
- corysama 10y agoHas 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-handwriting/ http://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-handw...
- jenhsun 10y agohttp://ufonts.com/fonts/dijkstra.html http://ufonts.com/fonts/dijkstra.html
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoThat link went straight to malware for me on Android; downvoted.
- lucb1e 10y agoNot for me, also on Android. (Btw I did not downvote you. Your downvoting a malware link seems a legit enough reason, since flagging will be judged by someone who might not see the malware warning and might take your flagging rights away or something else invisible to you because you're doing "invalid" flagging.)
- Arnavion 10y agoYes, it has a bunch of ad scripts that cover the page with an invisible flash element. Clicking it generates popups and popunders. Pity you're being downvoted.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoAh, yes, it actually triggers when I scroll.
- iamcreasy 10y agoI see the font without any ad. Using Chrome + uBlock Origin.
- davis 10y agoThanks for sharing my post. Feel free to ask any questions.
- parennoob 10y agoAre 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.
- PuffinBlue 10y agoIf you give it a try you'll see it doesn't work well and it's nothing like cursive or 'natural' handwriting. The sheet you have to fill in changes your natural handwriting fairly dramatically (it did for me at least).
- ProfChronos 10y agoDid the same for me too, seems logic if you look at the limited "data sample" they can analyze with the sheet you fill in
- elcapitan 10y agoBecause in cursive writing, the letters are connected - that's something that works in high quality, high effort script fonts. They way they do it is to use OpenType replacement features for various combinations of letters. For example, there are a bunch of a's in one font, and when the OpenType system detects a+n, it chooses the a that is drawn to connect with the n. There also may be different versions of the letters, so that the text gets more rhythm (like naturally written). It would actually be an interesting machine learning application not only to recognize letters from an actual sample (say a document in cursive writing), but also to understand how the letters connect and then create a cursive font based on that.
- shivsta 10y agoYeah, i was thinking that they should have a different template pdf where the letters are not shown in the boxes, but perhaps beside or underneath the boxes. When you're writing over those typed letters, you're more likely to trace them, resulting in a less natural handwriting.
- TheRealPomax 10y ago
- soylentcola 10y agoHuh. I remember having a program that did this on my old Toshiba convertible laptop back in 2005. I got it on eBay for fairly cheap and it was neat to have a pretty lightweight (for the time) laptop with a screen you could flip around and use as a tablet with active digitizer. Wonder if I still have the old font file floating around anywhere.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoYou know, I could see this being a fun tool for people who are into calligraphy to make their own fonts. I'm not sure that just "Turn my natural handwriting into a font" is what this does though. I tried it, and it worked much more cleanly with calligraphy.
- conchy 10y agoThere used to be a company that offered something like this in MacWorld and PCMagazine in the early 90's.
- sehugg 10y agoSkyMall too.
- phaed 10y agoWhich are the inner auxiliary lines? The black grid lines? The light square box lines? The inner light horizontal lines?
- developer2 10y agoThe light square box would make the most sense.
- ecesena 10y agoI can see an application for creating a company/product logo. I'd use it for my side projects.
- WalterBright 10y agoOne 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' images, and select one randomly and then 'jitter' its positioning a bit. I'd also use a background that looks like paper, rather than the perfect white or sepia ones current readers do. Heck, it would be easy enough to scan a few dozen blank sheets of paperback paper, and then pick one randomly for each page.
- OJFord 10y ago> I've often thought that if I wrote an ebook reader, I'd ... Please write an eBook reader.
- toxican 10y ago"My dearest eBook reader..."
- WalterBright 10y agoI'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.
- sago 10y ago> 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.
- khedoros 10y agoI'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.
- gravypod 10y agoThis might be a great crypto tool! I can turn my hand writing into a font and then keep printed hard copies of all of my data! No one will be able to read it!
- joshschreuder 10y agoSecurity through obscurity.
- Crito 10y agoNeat idea, but what's the point of a font that nobody can read?
- kazinator 10y agoBetter do it five or six times, and then switch among all those captured fonts in the document, to have some variation in the letter forms. Otherwise your document will be the typographical equivalent of a drum track from 80's synth pop. Ooh, hit me with that bit-for-bit identical snare drum sample again: snap, snap, ...
- treystout 10y agoIn case you want something a bit more real than what font engines offer, check out https://handwriting.io https://handwriting.io (disclosure: I work there)
- alfanick 10y agoWhile idea is neat, there are artists who design fonts based on your hardwriting with better quality. While I would like sometimes to use my handwriting digatally, you cannot create "real" effect without having every ligature (two, three leters) written in the template. Just a thought, instead of having every ligature you could let a camera/tablet observe how you are writing certain "test sentences" and turn this data into autoencoder neural network that would turn any text into "your handwriting".