7 ms·

Making a font of my handwriting

337 points by kickofline 1y ago

al_borland 1y ago
There used to be a form to fill out in Sky Mall to be able to do this through some service. Back in the days where you would fill it out by hand and mail your handwriting to them.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  Sky Mall, LOL. (No) thanks for the memories.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
I wonder if there's any way to transform this approach taken by Amy Goodchild into actual font files: https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/cursive-handwriting-in-javascript https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/cursive-handwriting-in-jav...
- Gualdrapo 1y ago
  I'd bet it would be matter of "translating" those Chaikin's paths to Bézier. Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf and whatnot.
  - gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
    > Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf It's unfortunately not very easy to generate modern TTF/OTF fonts from Metafont sources. If you're careful to not use any crazy pens, you can compile with Metapost and then import the outlines into FontForge, but it's still fairly tricky to make everything work properly.
nartho 1y ago
>Next, I wanted to change the heading fonts from a monospace font to something cursive The font created is print, not cursive.
- wjrb 1y ago
  Maybe cursive in a "Comic Sans in the default 'cursive' fallback font on Windows" kind of way.
- spcebar 1y ago
  At least in the world of web, cursive is a typographic term referring to fonts that aren't sans or sans serif and are typically used for decorative purposes.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's not true in the world of typography. Cursive there afaik mostly means that it has a ton of ligatures (i.e. a ton of "sorts.") Fonts that are decorative, when I worked in prepress, were simply called "decorative." It just meant "not for body text" i.e. hard or annoying to read. I assume in the past it meant "don't buy a ton of these, and none in small sizes" because you weren't ever going to be putting a bunch on a page.
    - CharlesW 1y ago
      > I'm pretty sure that's not true in the world of typography. You're correct, "cursive" is a handwriting term, not a typographic one. The parent commenter almost certainly meant "script". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_typeface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_typeface
  - OJFord 1y ago
    Even like this where it's not just not 'joined-up', but not even independent cursive characters? This is just printed characters, as GP says, this seems particularly relevant because I'd think the hardest part of doing this with cursive handwriting would be all the combinations of the ways different letters flow together - if you restrict yourself to independent characters then you remove that problem.
jlev 1y ago
I did something similar for my wedding website back in 2013. We used a mail-in service that produced a decent TTF, and then I converted it to a WOFF. Still online at https://ruthandjosh.net/story/ https://ruthandjosh.net/story/ (warning, millennial cringe ahead)
- aswinmohanme 1y ago
  warmed my heart, wishing you a great life together
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Thank you for that cringe! What a great way to end the week. Shabbat shalom.
- Weetile 1y ago
  So is it true that Ruth had champagne on the flight without you?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- caminanteblanco 1y ago
  So wholesome, and here's a belated congratulations!
- stavros 1y ago
  Well that was delightful.
- wvbdmp 1y ago
  Hell yeah, keep that site up. What a marvel in this age of link rot.
  - jlev 1y ago
    Thank you, I’m never letting the domain go.
mdorazio 1y ago
For those who were hoping for the physical version of this, I recommend the Stuff Made Here Video on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQO2XTP7QDw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQO2XTP7QDw
dse1982 1y ago
When I was a teenager I made a ttf-font from the handwriting of a girl I was in love with as a gift for her. Man I underestimated that task seriously. I used some tool that was included in the Corel Draw Suite, scanned a sheet of paper on which she had written me the alphabet (in upper and in lower case) and vectorized everything by hand. It was so. Much. Work. Since then a quarter of a century has passed and it is one of those stories which leaves me amazed at the amount of naive stubborn energy of youth. I mean it was just for a birthday but I spent so much time on it and most of that time I didn't really know what I was doing. But somehow I succeeded, probably just because I didn't know any better.
- snapetom 1y ago
  So what happened with her? Was the effort worth it? Happily ever after?
  - dse1982 1y ago
    I don't know what she is doing now, since we lost contact many years ago. Basically after school when I moved away to study. So no happily ever after with her, but it was absolutely worth the effort. It would never have worked out, since we were way to different, which she knew, but I – as always – took longer to understand. However it was such an important thing for me, since it was the first time that I was really confident and brave enough to be really open about my feelings and my interest. Of course it took me some time and overcoming, but in the end I was able to openly communicate to her and also not trying to play cool or hide it from my friends. I think it really was the first conscious experience for me in regards to that: to really just do the jump, be open about my feelings, take my shot and in the process make myself vulnerable. As I said, she gave me a clear "no" and I think that was for the better – not only because we came from quite different worlds but also because I still had so much to learn. However she handled all this so perfect, gracefully and appreciative: actually for me the perfect experience to learn and grow from. We stayed friends, continued to do stuff together and it never was much of a topic after a while. I still remember how after I was a bit petulant in the first time after her rejecting me and refused her offering me some of her lunch. She told me in the most respectful way that just because she said no to one thing I didn't have to say no to everything else now. Which was exactly what I needed to hear. It showed me that I hadn't lost any of her respect and that relationships with people do not have to be all or nothing, can have so many facets which can (almost) all be valuable and should be appreciated – just as she still appreciated our relationship. Although there was no happily ever after, I still like to remember all that. Today I am having my happily ever after with a very wonderful someone else. But to become the person who is having this, the whole experience with that girl was so important. I was making myself very vulnerable for the first time and it was the best fail-scenario I could ever think of and it helped me become more brave and open about myself and my feelings. Thanks for making me remember this experience.
tombert 1y ago
My handwriting is exceedingly bad, and it gets worse every time I do it. It's sort of a feedback loop; my handwriting is bad so I type everything, and since I never practice my handwriting it gets bad. I think if someone made a font based on my handwriting it could be used as a cryptographic hash. I do like the idea of it though; even though I don't think it's less personal to type a message than handwrite it, it feels less personal. Having a font based on handwriting might help with that.
- ycombinete 1y ago
  Maybe you could use it as a font for black metal album covers
- chneu 1y ago
  the whole "there are easier ways to do things so i never develop a skillset" is a big problem nowadays, imo. There are always easier ways to do stuff but in the long run they aren't the better way to do something because you wind up learning a system instead of how to do something. i'll use my roommate as an example. Dude uses a knife sharpener system but can't actually sharpen a knife with a stone. The second his system doesn't work he can't actually sharpen a knife. All he knows is how to use the system. I see this in a lot of people nowadays. They know how to follow some instructions but the connections to why are never made. As a society our basic skillsets are extremely atrophied because capitalism has turned everything into a pay-to-save-time system, or something.
  - tombert 1y ago
    It’s not a “nowadays” problem. People have always been like that. People probably stopped routinely learning how to ride horses once once cars started getting popular.
apparent 1y ago
They say that you remember more when handwriting than when typing. I believe that. One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it? I would think that part of the value would be in seeing the information written in your own handwriting, which makes me suspect that having a font like this that you could digitize into might be better than writing by hand (whic probably provides some of the memory boost) and then digitizing into a traditional font.
- jkingsman 1y ago
  Perhaps the visual aspect is responsible for a bit, but I know that even notes that I never reviewed after the fact but handwrote had more sticking power in my head than when I typed. Both my partner and I used tablets for notetaking through college and found it at least analogous if not superior to handwritten notes, since it became easier to link topics that you might otherwise need to back-reference on paper that could instead just be a big arrow. Lots more freedom to use arrows, visual linkages, and asides when you weren't constrained by 8.5x11 paper (which maybe allows a bit of that but otherwise forces linearity, more or less).
- dotancohen 1y ago
  > One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it? In my experience, you do. I use a Boox E-ink tablet to write on, and I completely concur that just using the stylus to write things commits them to my memory. The things that I've typed, I have to go back and look at.
- gxs 1y ago
  This is not a humble brag by any means, just sharing my experience I type 121 wpm and I simply can’t concentrate when writing by hand It’s too slow and instead of focusing on formulating my thoughts or capturing what’s being said I get super fidgety Not to mention my handwriting stinks For me it’s a lot easier to remember when I’m fully immersed and processing ideas vs tediously writing I do think this is probably just lack of handwriting skill - I definitely learned all this in school and took handwritten notes most of my life, but I suspect I never did it right back then
samyar 1y ago
If i do that you will need archaeologists to find out what i have writen
password4321 1y ago
AFAIK Microsoft Font Maker still works (poorly?) for free with Windows Ink styluses. I don't remember what I used decades ago but I think it was a PowerToy for Windows Tablet PC. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=US https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=U...
croisillon 1y ago
Related: Show HN: AI tool to turn handwriting into a font (June 2025, 0 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268487 Coding my handwriting (May 2024, 75 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 ... and probably quite a few more!
- ycombinete 1y ago
  I’ve always been excited by posts like this but they always end up looking like far too much work for my taste. This is the first one where I’ve thought, “hey I could do that over the course of a few of the baby’s naps!”
kragen 1y ago
I did this in a much more manual way in 02006: http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/ http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/ All the steps I did at the time should still work today, and they may be of some interest if you're trying to do the thing Chris gave up on in "Failing to do it myself", perhaps because you're dissatisfied with the results of the alternative approaches.
jdranczewski 1y ago
The description of trying to use FontForge cracked me up, I recall trying it myself a while ago and it going very similarly!
clickety_clack 1y ago
I might try this with my own handwriting. How well does it replicate an indecipherable scrawl?
esafak 1y ago
The kerning is not great.
hodgehog11 1y ago
I always thought this was such a cool idea to preserve the handwriting style of someone you love (I adore my partner's handwriting), but the conversion to a font never seems to keep the spacing right, as you show in the final comparison. I've been thinking of tinkering with an image to image generation model to convert text output from the font into something that looks closer to the handwritten version. Seems like it should be possible, but you need a lot of data.
Liftyee 1y ago
Honestly, this idea is intriguing enought that I might actually pay for a month of that service. I'm willing to make that my first software purchase because I want to support symbiotic business practices like the one described (as opposed to adversarial rent-seeking ones seen all too often these days).
AndrewStephens 1y ago
I did this for my old blog back in the 2000s - I used an online service that produced a pretty bad font that I could clean up using FontForge into something reasonable. It was a fun novelty but my penmanship is pretty bad and once in a while I would get flamed in the comments in my own handwriting.
itomato 1y ago
There was retail boxed software that would do this on Windows 95 that included worksheets and software. You'd write examples in each square of the worksheet that you would then scan in and convert to TTF with their proprietary software. I would say it seems like a simple enough task for a weekend project but I know better.
fhuchut 1y ago
That font doesn’t suck. However, I can tell that you’re introvertive (retalics), a little ADHD (open/unconnected O character), have OCD tendencies (highly legible script), and borderline type A (lines in top of x close together and Fs)
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  Why do you believe in graphology?
mockingloris 1y ago
Kudos to you and the journey. I appreciate your honesty honestly about giving up on open source alternative for a quite cheap alternative for something you get to keep as your own is not a bad tradeoff. Your story resonates. I am a self-taught creative and I get stubborn at times about wanting to use/bend a specific technology/tool to achieve a task; maybe it's a sunk cost fallacy OCD thing. Your site design has character. PS: Bookmarked your site with the tags - fonts, developer-blog, creative-sites, boutique-designs... on my firefox browser.
WalterBright 1y ago
Hmm. A font of my own handwriting sounds like unbreakable encryption!
2Gkashmiri 1y ago
I had an iPhone 2g back in 2010 when we had the first app store and cydia. I had seen an app where one could draw each alphabet and it would spit out a font file.... They broke it with a paid update and I have never seen another app like that
DiddlyWinks 1y ago
[dead]
edweis 1y ago
What a bummer the website https://www.calligraphr.com https://www.calligraphr.com is a subscription model. I could impulsively pay $100 to get my handwriting as a TTF font and be quite happy about it.
- akshayshah 1y ago
  TFA goes into this in some depth: there's an option to subscribe for one month with a one-time payment. After the month is up, your account automatically reverts to the free plan and you get an email with your fonts attached.
- urbandw311er 1y ago
  The subscription is only for backups and ongoing changes - you get to keep your font forever. I think the author mentions that the whole experience cost them about $10
marginalien 1y ago
This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing. I am currently preparing for a workshop with children in which I want to let them “draw” their own website/web-apps. So far I did not plan to let them create their own fonts, as I did not know how to, but now I know. Thanks to you! Ps: if you have any other ideas how to make such a workshop for children more exciting, please let me know! For instance, I wanted to let them create paper prototypes and then turn them into working click dummies so to cross the bridge between analogue and digital in way that feels natural to kids. Btw, by “kids” I refer to children at the age of 8-10 years old.
- oftheirc 1y ago
  Hi, I would like to contribute to this if you'll have me. I have been wanting to get experience educating young kids from my home town about technology how it can be used for creative work. Based in Nigeria/Africa. I wrestle JavaScript with single quotes and no semi-colons.
wainguo 1y ago
Cool，I also want a font for my handwriting
jactoryfoe 1y ago
[dead]
meander_water 1y ago
Others who have gone down a similar path: - Amy Goodchild: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 - Kathleen Tuite: https://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2012/12/creating-font-from-my-handwriting.html https://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2012/12/creating-font-from... - Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/08/handwritten-font/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/08/handwritten-font/
- mrspuratic 1y ago
  There's also the old but excellent Tekton, based on architect Frank D.K. Ching's handwriting, albeit designed by David Siegel of Adobe.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
c4p0 1y ago
I'm developing a web open source application to create your own handwritten font. It's already functional, and I have plans to add new features. I encourage you to try it out. https://ownfonts.cielo.ovh/ https://ownfonts.cielo.ovh/ Here's the source code: https://github.com/c4p0/OwnFonts https://github.com/c4p0/OwnFonts If you're interested in collaborating on the project, you can send me a message on GitHub.
WhyNotHugo 1y ago
The author’s experience summarises well the sad state of GUI apps, especially in the open source world. That’s why we end up using command line tools and text-based interfaces. Or I end up writing code to do things. It’s not that I dislike the idea of GUI apps, it’s that in practice, they make me have a really bad time, and usually don’t even get the job done.
AfterHIA 1y ago
I was abused as a kid so my handwriting is crap. I also don't know cursive very well. I feel like if they made a font of my handwriting everyone would say, "woah, oh! There goes Mr. Poory McIrresponsible Parents!" If you tried to pull it up in Microsoft Word the font (typeface) name would be, "Danny Wets The Bed." That's an aside though; great job mate mega post!
dodobirdy 1y ago
Is the tech good enough for it to be undetectable. If I were to hypothetically use it to complete the handwritten assignments that my old school professors demand (in much of the yappier courses) would this slip through without getting caught. This is all hypothetical of course.
huksley 1y ago
This handwritten font by Ulrike includes ligatures and absolutely amazing https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide

337 points by kickofline 1y ago

There used to be a form to fill out in Sky Mall to be able to do this through some service. Back in the days where you would fill it out by hand and mail your handwriting to them.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
Sky Mall, LOL. (No) thanks for the memories.

pavel_lishin 1y ago

I wonder if there's any way to transform this approach taken by Amy Goodchild into actual font files: https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/cursive-handwriting-in-javascript https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/cursive-handwriting-in-jav...

Gualdrapo 1y ago
I'd bet it would be matter of "translating" those Chaikin's paths to Bézier. Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf and whatnot.
- gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
  > Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf It's unfortunately not very easy to generate modern TTF/OTF fonts from Metafont sources. If you're careful to not use any crazy pens, you can compile with Metapost and then import the outlines into FontForge, but it's still fairly tricky to make everything work properly.

nartho 1y ago

>Next, I wanted to change the heading fonts from a monospace font to something cursive The font created is print, not cursive.

wjrb 1y ago
Maybe cursive in a "Comic Sans in the default 'cursive' fallback font on Windows" kind of way.
spcebar 1y ago
At least in the world of web, cursive is a typographic term referring to fonts that aren't sans or sans serif and are typically used for decorative purposes.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's not true in the world of typography. Cursive there afaik mostly means that it has a ton of ligatures (i.e. a ton of "sorts.") Fonts that are decorative, when I worked in prepress, were simply called "decorative." It just meant "not for body text" i.e. hard or annoying to read. I assume in the past it meant "don't buy a ton of these, and none in small sizes" because you weren't ever going to be putting a bunch on a page.
  - CharlesW 1y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that's not true in the world of typography. You're correct, "cursive" is a handwriting term, not a typographic one. The parent commenter almost certainly meant "script". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_typeface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_typeface
- OJFord 1y ago
  Even like this where it's not just not 'joined-up', but not even independent cursive characters? This is just printed characters, as GP says, this seems particularly relevant because I'd think the hardest part of doing this with cursive handwriting would be all the combinations of the ways different letters flow together - if you restrict yourself to independent characters then you remove that problem.

jlev 1y ago

I did something similar for my wedding website back in 2013. We used a mail-in service that produced a decent TTF, and then I converted it to a WOFF. Still online at https://ruthandjosh.net/story/ https://ruthandjosh.net/story/ (warning, millennial cringe ahead)

aswinmohanme 1y ago
warmed my heart, wishing you a great life together
dotancohen 1y ago
Thank you for that cringe! What a great way to end the week. Shabbat shalom.
Weetile 1y ago
So is it true that Ruth had champagne on the flight without you?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
caminanteblanco 1y ago
So wholesome, and here's a belated congratulations!
stavros 1y ago
Well that was delightful.
wvbdmp 1y ago
Hell yeah, keep that site up. What a marvel in this age of link rot.
- jlev 1y ago
  Thank you, I’m never letting the domain go.

mdorazio 1y ago

For those who were hoping for the physical version of this, I recommend the Stuff Made Here Video on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQO2XTP7QDw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQO2XTP7QDw

dse1982 1y ago

When I was a teenager I made a ttf-font from the handwriting of a girl I was in love with as a gift for her. Man I underestimated that task seriously. I used some tool that was included in the Corel Draw Suite, scanned a sheet of paper on which she had written me the alphabet (in upper and in lower case) and vectorized everything by hand. It was so. Much. Work. Since then a quarter of a century has passed and it is one of those stories which leaves me amazed at the amount of naive stubborn energy of youth. I mean it was just for a birthday but I spent so much time on it and most of that time I didn't really know what I was doing. But somehow I succeeded, probably just because I didn't know any better.

snapetom 1y ago
So what happened with her? Was the effort worth it? Happily ever after?
- dse1982 1y ago
  I don't know what she is doing now, since we lost contact many years ago. Basically after school when I moved away to study. So no happily ever after with her, but it was absolutely worth the effort. It would never have worked out, since we were way to different, which she knew, but I – as always – took longer to understand. However it was such an important thing for me, since it was the first time that I was really confident and brave enough to be really open about my feelings and my interest. Of course it took me some time and overcoming, but in the end I was able to openly communicate to her and also not trying to play cool or hide it from my friends. I think it really was the first conscious experience for me in regards to that: to really just do the jump, be open about my feelings, take my shot and in the process make myself vulnerable. As I said, she gave me a clear "no" and I think that was for the better – not only because we came from quite different worlds but also because I still had so much to learn. However she handled all this so perfect, gracefully and appreciative: actually for me the perfect experience to learn and grow from. We stayed friends, continued to do stuff together and it never was much of a topic after a while. I still remember how after I was a bit petulant in the first time after her rejecting me and refused her offering me some of her lunch. She told me in the most respectful way that just because she said no to one thing I didn't have to say no to everything else now. Which was exactly what I needed to hear. It showed me that I hadn't lost any of her respect and that relationships with people do not have to be all or nothing, can have so many facets which can (almost) all be valuable and should be appreciated – just as she still appreciated our relationship. Although there was no happily ever after, I still like to remember all that. Today I am having my happily ever after with a very wonderful someone else. But to become the person who is having this, the whole experience with that girl was so important. I was making myself very vulnerable for the first time and it was the best fail-scenario I could ever think of and it helped me become more brave and open about myself and my feelings. Thanks for making me remember this experience.

tombert 1y ago

My handwriting is exceedingly bad, and it gets worse every time I do it. It's sort of a feedback loop; my handwriting is bad so I type everything, and since I never practice my handwriting it gets bad. I think if someone made a font based on my handwriting it could be used as a cryptographic hash. I do like the idea of it though; even though I don't think it's less personal to type a message than handwrite it, it feels less personal. Having a font based on handwriting might help with that.

ycombinete 1y ago
Maybe you could use it as a font for black metal album covers
chneu 1y ago
the whole "there are easier ways to do things so i never develop a skillset" is a big problem nowadays, imo. There are always easier ways to do stuff but in the long run they aren't the better way to do something because you wind up learning a system instead of how to do something. i'll use my roommate as an example. Dude uses a knife sharpener system but can't actually sharpen a knife with a stone. The second his system doesn't work he can't actually sharpen a knife. All he knows is how to use the system. I see this in a lot of people nowadays. They know how to follow some instructions but the connections to why are never made. As a society our basic skillsets are extremely atrophied because capitalism has turned everything into a pay-to-save-time system, or something.
- tombert 1y ago
  It’s not a “nowadays” problem. People have always been like that. People probably stopped routinely learning how to ride horses once once cars started getting popular.

apparent 1y ago

They say that you remember more when handwriting than when typing. I believe that. One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it? I would think that part of the value would be in seeing the information written in your own handwriting, which makes me suspect that having a font like this that you could digitize into might be better than writing by hand (whic probably provides some of the memory boost) and then digitizing into a traditional font.

jkingsman 1y ago
Perhaps the visual aspect is responsible for a bit, but I know that even notes that I never reviewed after the fact but handwrote had more sticking power in my head than when I typed. Both my partner and I used tablets for notetaking through college and found it at least analogous if not superior to handwritten notes, since it became easier to link topics that you might otherwise need to back-reference on paper that could instead just be a big arrow. Lots more freedom to use arrows, visual linkages, and asides when you weren't constrained by 8.5x11 paper (which maybe allows a bit of that but otherwise forces linearity, more or less).
dotancohen 1y ago
> One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it? In my experience, you do. I use a Boox E-ink tablet to write on, and I completely concur that just using the stylus to write things commits them to my memory. The things that I've typed, I have to go back and look at.
gxs 1y ago
This is not a humble brag by any means, just sharing my experience I type 121 wpm and I simply can’t concentrate when writing by hand It’s too slow and instead of focusing on formulating my thoughts or capturing what’s being said I get super fidgety Not to mention my handwriting stinks For me it’s a lot easier to remember when I’m fully immersed and processing ideas vs tediously writing I do think this is probably just lack of handwriting skill - I definitely learned all this in school and took handwritten notes most of my life, but I suspect I never did it right back then

samyar 1y ago

If i do that you will need archaeologists to find out what i have writen

password4321 1y ago

AFAIK Microsoft Font Maker still works (poorly?) for free with Windows Ink styluses. I don't remember what I used decades ago but I think it was a PowerToy for Windows Tablet PC. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=US https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=U...

croisillon 1y ago

Related: Show HN: AI tool to turn handwriting into a font (June 2025, 0 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268487 Coding my handwriting (May 2024, 75 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 ... and probably quite a few more!

ycombinete 1y ago
I’ve always been excited by posts like this but they always end up looking like far too much work for my taste. This is the first one where I’ve thought, “hey I could do that over the course of a few of the baby’s naps!”

kragen 1y ago

I did this in a much more manual way in 02006: http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/ http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/ All the steps I did at the time should still work today, and they may be of some interest if you're trying to do the thing Chris gave up on in "Failing to do it myself", perhaps because you're dissatisfied with the results of the alternative approaches.

jdranczewski 1y ago

The description of trying to use FontForge cracked me up, I recall trying it myself a while ago and it going very similarly!

clickety_clack 1y ago

I might try this with my own handwriting. How well does it replicate an indecipherable scrawl?

esafak 1y ago

The kerning is not great.

hodgehog11 1y ago

I always thought this was such a cool idea to preserve the handwriting style of someone you love (I adore my partner's handwriting), but the conversion to a font never seems to keep the spacing right, as you show in the final comparison. I've been thinking of tinkering with an image to image generation model to convert text output from the font into something that looks closer to the handwritten version. Seems like it should be possible, but you need a lot of data.

Liftyee 1y ago

Honestly, this idea is intriguing enought that I might actually pay for a month of that service. I'm willing to make that my first software purchase because I want to support symbiotic business practices like the one described (as opposed to adversarial rent-seeking ones seen all too often these days).

AndrewStephens 1y ago

I did this for my old blog back in the 2000s - I used an online service that produced a pretty bad font that I could clean up using FontForge into something reasonable. It was a fun novelty but my penmanship is pretty bad and once in a while I would get flamed in the comments in my own handwriting.

itomato 1y ago

There was retail boxed software that would do this on Windows 95 that included worksheets and software. You'd write examples in each square of the worksheet that you would then scan in and convert to TTF with their proprietary software. I would say it seems like a simple enough task for a weekend project but I know better.

fhuchut 1y ago

That font doesn’t suck. However, I can tell that you’re introvertive (retalics), a little ADHD (open/unconnected O character), have OCD tendencies (highly legible script), and borderline type A (lines in top of x close together and Fs)

wizzwizz4 1y ago
Why do you believe in graphology?

mockingloris 1y ago

Kudos to you and the journey. I appreciate your honesty honestly about giving up on open source alternative for a quite cheap alternative for something you get to keep as your own is not a bad tradeoff. Your story resonates. I am a self-taught creative and I get stubborn at times about wanting to use/bend a specific technology/tool to achieve a task; maybe it's a sunk cost fallacy OCD thing. Your site design has character. PS: Bookmarked your site with the tags - fonts, developer-blog, creative-sites, boutique-designs... on my firefox browser.

WalterBright 1y ago

Hmm. A font of my own handwriting sounds like unbreakable encryption!

2Gkashmiri 1y ago

I had an iPhone 2g back in 2010 when we had the first app store and cydia. I had seen an app where one could draw each alphabet and it would spit out a font file.... They broke it with a paid update and I have never seen another app like that

DiddlyWinks 1y ago

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edweis 1y ago

What a bummer the website https://www.calligraphr.com https://www.calligraphr.com is a subscription model. I could impulsively pay $100 to get my handwriting as a TTF font and be quite happy about it.

akshayshah 1y ago
TFA goes into this in some depth: there's an option to subscribe for one month with a one-time payment. After the month is up, your account automatically reverts to the free plan and you get an email with your fonts attached.
urbandw311er 1y ago
The subscription is only for backups and ongoing changes - you get to keep your font forever. I think the author mentions that the whole experience cost them about $10

marginalien 1y ago

This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing. I am currently preparing for a workshop with children in which I want to let them “draw” their own website/web-apps. So far I did not plan to let them create their own fonts, as I did not know how to, but now I know. Thanks to you! Ps: if you have any other ideas how to make such a workshop for children more exciting, please let me know! For instance, I wanted to let them create paper prototypes and then turn them into working click dummies so to cross the bridge between analogue and digital in way that feels natural to kids. Btw, by “kids” I refer to children at the age of 8-10 years old.

oftheirc 1y ago
Hi, I would like to contribute to this if you'll have me. I have been wanting to get experience educating young kids from my home town about technology how it can be used for creative work. Based in Nigeria/Africa. I wrestle JavaScript with single quotes and no semi-colons.

wainguo 1y ago

Cool，I also want a font for my handwriting

jactoryfoe 1y ago

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meander_water 1y ago

Others who have gone down a similar path: - Amy Goodchild: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291 - Kathleen Tuite: https://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2012/12/creating-font-from-my-handwriting.html https://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2012/12/creating-font-from... - Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/08/handwritten-font/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/08/handwritten-font/

mrspuratic 1y ago
There's also the old but excellent Tekton, based on architect Frank D.K. Ching's handwriting, albeit designed by David Siegel of Adobe.

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c4p0 1y ago

I'm developing a web open source application to create your own handwritten font. It's already functional, and I have plans to add new features. I encourage you to try it out. https://ownfonts.cielo.ovh/ https://ownfonts.cielo.ovh/ Here's the source code: https://github.com/c4p0/OwnFonts https://github.com/c4p0/OwnFonts If you're interested in collaborating on the project, you can send me a message on GitHub.

WhyNotHugo 1y ago

The author’s experience summarises well the sad state of GUI apps, especially in the open source world. That’s why we end up using command line tools and text-based interfaces. Or I end up writing code to do things. It’s not that I dislike the idea of GUI apps, it’s that in practice, they make me have a really bad time, and usually don’t even get the job done.

AfterHIA 1y ago

I was abused as a kid so my handwriting is crap. I also don't know cursive very well. I feel like if they made a font of my handwriting everyone would say, "woah, oh! There goes Mr. Poory McIrresponsible Parents!" If you tried to pull it up in Microsoft Word the font (typeface) name would be, "Danny Wets The Bed." That's an aside though; great job mate mega post!

dodobirdy 1y ago

Is the tech good enough for it to be undetectable. If I were to hypothetically use it to complete the handwritten assignments that my old school professors demand (in much of the yappier courses) would this slip through without getting caught. This is all hypothetical of course.

huksley 1y ago

This handwritten font by Ulrike includes ligatures and absolutely amazing https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide