3 ms·

It's possible in PostScript to dynamically modify each glyph. Long long ago, I saw a small collection of typewriter and handwriting fonts that did this. This wo

It's possible in PostScript to dynamically modify each glyph. Long long ago, I saw a small collection of typewriter and handwriting fonts that did this. This would have been back in the mid 90's or so.

zimpenfish 4y ago
I used a handwriting font with dynamic variations ~99-00 to generate address labels for someone entering competitions because printed labels were considered somewhat "cheating". Wasn't entirely convincing if you looked hard but miles better than 50 identical Times New Romans.
NavinF 4y ago
TIL postscript has an rng in the form of the rand function. Assuming it’s widely implemented, it’d be hilarious to distribute files that replace their contents with a 4koma 1% of the time.
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  Is this related? https://itnext.io/typescript-and-turing-completeness-ba8ded8f3de3?gi=86e3a90f912d https://itnext.io/typescript-and-turing-completeness-ba8ded8... I'd read this long ago, but my impression was that all the hinting stuff is auto stripped out of loaded web fonts for security/performance these days (maybe after some of those early font vulnerabilities that caused NoScript to block fonts), so most of us can't use it. That's why I was wondering if ligatures might be a reasonable hack.
  - gwern 4y ago
    You may not have an explicit rand(), but with the ligatures & substitution rules, you can add so much context sensitivity that no one will ever spot any duplications. That's how you can do things like https://litherum.blogspot.com/2019/03/addition-font.html https://litherum.blogspot.com/2019/03/addition-font.html https://pagedout.institute/download/PagedOut_002_beta2.pdf#page=42 https://pagedout.institute/download/PagedOut_002_beta2.pdf#p... https://aftertheflood.com/journal/the-worlds-first-code-free-sparkline-typeface/ https://aftertheflood.com/journal/the-worlds-first-code-free... https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html (most of these will work in a browser). I've also suggested that you can create 'prank fonts' which add in subtle typos sporadically. Less evilly, this is what calligraphy handwriting fonts do to get convincing variation.

zimpenfish 4y ago

I used a handwriting font with dynamic variations ~99-00 to generate address labels for someone entering competitions because printed labels were considered somewhat "cheating". Wasn't entirely convincing if you looked hard but miles better than 50 identical Times New Romans.

NavinF 4y ago

TIL postscript has an rng in the form of the rand function. Assuming it’s widely implemented, it’d be hilarious to distribute files that replace their contents with a 4koma 1% of the time.

capitainenemo 4y ago
Is this related? https://itnext.io/typescript-and-turing-completeness-ba8ded8f3de3?gi=86e3a90f912d https://itnext.io/typescript-and-turing-completeness-ba8ded8... I'd read this long ago, but my impression was that all the hinting stuff is auto stripped out of loaded web fonts for security/performance these days (maybe after some of those early font vulnerabilities that caused NoScript to block fonts), so most of us can't use it. That's why I was wondering if ligatures might be a reasonable hack.
- gwern 4y ago
  You may not have an explicit rand(), but with the ligatures & substitution rules, you can add so much context sensitivity that no one will ever spot any duplications. That's how you can do things like https://litherum.blogspot.com/2019/03/addition-font.html https://litherum.blogspot.com/2019/03/addition-font.html https://pagedout.institute/download/PagedOut_002_beta2.pdf#page=42 https://pagedout.institute/download/PagedOut_002_beta2.pdf#p... https://aftertheflood.com/journal/the-worlds-first-code-free-sparkline-typeface/ https://aftertheflood.com/journal/the-worlds-first-code-free... https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html https://www.coderelay.io/fontemon.html (most of these will work in a browser). I've also suggested that you can create 'prank fonts' which add in subtle typos sporadically. Less evilly, this is what calligraphy handwriting fonts do to get convincing variation.