trogdoro

10 ms·

91.
by trogdoro 15y ago
OMG, this thread is so stupid. This is such a dumb idea. (That was a joke, get it? :)
92.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> This reasoning reminds me of the "nutritionist" argument Except that in this case the before and after are both man-made.
93.
by trogdoro 15y ago
I added a link to an interface for trying your own mappings. It didn't get any notice, so adding it here as well: http://dotsies.org/design-your-own/
94.
by trogdoro 15y ago
For sho. Took a little time, but there are only 26 letters so it's easier than you'd think.
95.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Try clicking the "random" link a bunch of times to got a feel for the possible variations.
96.
by trogdoro 15y ago
I coded up this page in response to the comments from my HN post on Thursday - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3601687 . There was a lot of interest / critique re the mapping between letters and dots, so I resurrected this UI for exp
97.
Font using dots instead of letters - Design your own version (type a mapping)(dotsies.org)
5 points by trogdoro 15y ago|4 comments
98.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Excellent:) I'm also trogdoro on twitter. Doing it over skype could work as well. You could use the bookmarklet on a local html page and share your screen so I'd have no way to know the original text. There are only 26 letters. It's muc
99.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Consider that before the printing press was invented, the way most words were produced was by writing them by hand. The next time you're using a pen, ask yourself whether the letters you're writing seem A. pretty convenient to write, or B.
100.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Let's say you're looking at a letter that's the lowest dot and you've forgotten what it is, but you remember that d is the 2nd lowest and f is the next in the pattern (the 2 highest). For you to be right, it would have to not occur to the
101.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> Arabic, Sanskrit, and Idu are distinctly non Latin but incredibly easy to discern even to a first time viewer Most of these look like spaghetti to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phrase_sanskrit.png If I scoot my chair back 4
102.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> Also the pure dots present just the base system, typography and different typefaces can evolve from there with more aesthetics, redundancy, readability Absolutely. There could be several improvements in that way. Maybe along the lines
103.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Great ideas. > This is a fun experiment, and I commend you for trying it. I look forward to seeing vs 2.0 :) Thanks! I may code up something to let people pick different mappings and preview how it would look on some text. If I do I'l
104.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> why make the same (or rather opposite) mistake on purpose? The thought is that it's low effort to click a button on a computer to change the font of something you're reading (vs high effort to do the analogous thing to text you've wri
105.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> They sure are disconnected; you've made clouds of dots instead of continuous shapes. You may be looking at the table of letters, which is just for illustration, where the letters aren't connected. But if you look at the examples you'
106.
by trogdoro 15y ago
You're continuing to presume there's only one pattern, and it's the one that was picked. To drive home the point that this isn't the case, I'll list some out: 00001 00010 00100 01000 10000 ... 10000 01000 11000 00100 10100 ... 00001 00010
107.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Correct, punctuation is left alone since altering it would gain very little in the way of space efficiency. > the bookmarklet seems to skip over paragraphs that have a character they can't represent It's not that sophisticated. That's
108.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> Thoughts? Not bad! > More common consonants use smaller (sparse) dot patterns getting denser as you get into less common (frequent) letters A few mappings emphasizing fewer dots for frequent letters (making for "sparser" words) we
109.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> If anything, a wider font means my saccades need be less accurate. Then using a font where letters are, say, half an inch wide would be even better, eh? > What do you mean by "proportional shortcomings"? The ratio of the height to
110.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> Gathering experimental evidence by having many different people from many different demographics read... Why don't I get it peer reviewed why I'm at it. Then I can post in on hacker news in 2014. >> How would Arabic look if y
111.
by trogdoro 15y ago
I don't propose that Dotsies is without flaws or destined for any amount of adoption. Having said that, here is my parody of the reaction the poor sap (let's call him Marcus Librus) got who originally posted the latin alphabet on the ancie
112.
by trogdoro 15y ago
If you've got a better mapping in mind, post it. It would be interesting to see. Many things must be taken into account beyond just where the dots seem like they should go on the letters. However, there's a decent enough correlation on en
113.
by trogdoro 15y ago
With a stylus, the predominant goal is likely to keep movement to a minimum. It may seem to you that a similar dynamic would apply to letters, but in practice it's not the only driving factor. Other factors like the ambiguity caused by sp
114.
by trogdoro 15y ago
I challenge you to try it before judging. Ironically, as you read this your human eye is racing back and forth about twice as frantically as is necessary. Accents can easily be added. Braille has the same proportional shortcomings as nor
115.
by trogdoro 15y ago
It has characteristics of both. The words are is still made up of letters.
116.
by trogdoro 15y ago
True, but it's very rare that you see "be" and "ad" floating out in space by themselves. They are usually next to other words, which give them plenty of context. If they are by themselves, a dash or box can be added for context.
117.
by trogdoro 15y ago
> the strength of the human visual system is in "chunking" shapes Which is the main strong-point of dotsies. Words are more chunked together, and appear as recognizable shapes. > and making letters into clouds of disconnected dots
118.
by trogdoro 15y ago
Don't miss the forest for the trees. If the letters are next to other words, it's easy enough. If they're on their own it is more difficult, but this is rare and there are simple ways to compensate.
119.
by trogdoro 15y ago
A good point, but try it in practice and you'll encounter these situations very infrequently. The adjacent words serve as a sufficient context. If the text is by itself, a small line will suffice for a baseline.
120.
by trogdoro 15y ago
What constitutes research? Standing in a lab in a white jacket? The best research for testing the readability of something is to read it. Help out by giving it a try yourself. How would Arabic look if you hadn't encountered it before?

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