by WalterBright on 6/11/16, 7:43 PM
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' 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.
by corysama on 6/11/16, 4:31 PM
by kazinator on 6/12/16, 3:28 AM
Better 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, ...
by gravypod on 6/11/16, 11:16 PM
This 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!
by parennoob on 6/11/16, 4:52 PM
Are 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.
by Crito on 6/12/16, 12:06 AM
Neat idea, but what's the point of a font that nobody can read?
by phaed on 6/11/16, 6:07 PM
Which are the inner auxiliary lines? The black grid lines? The light square box lines? The inner light horizontal lines?
by alfanick on 6/12/16, 9:18 AM
While 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".
by soylentcola on 6/11/16, 5:25 PM
Huh. 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.
by conchy on 6/11/16, 6:01 PM
There used to be a company that offered something like this in MacWorld and PCMagazine in the early 90's.
by Aelinsaar on 6/11/16, 5:28 PM
You 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.
by treystout on 6/12/16, 4:59 AM
In case you want something a bit more real than what font engines offer, check out
https://handwriting.io (disclosure: I work there)
by khedoros on 6/11/16, 10:14 PM
I'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.
by ecesena on 6/11/16, 6:10 PM
I can see an application for creating a company/product logo. I'd use it for my side projects.