How to make a font of your handwriting with free software

http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/making.html

by silentbicycle • 18 years ago

32 9 18 years ago

teuobk• 18 years ago

If you happen to have a tablet PC and a copy of Windows, you can use Microsoft's free "My Font Tool" to create a font of your handwriting. Sure, it requires some hardware, but it's easy and the results are great.

brandong• 18 years ago

I've never met a programmer with handwriting I'd like to use as a font...

PieSquared• 18 years ago

Actually, I'd say that goes for all people, not just programmers...

I have never met anyone who can, with any regularity, write in monospace.

irrelative• 18 years ago

Very interesting. It seems like he could have used a scanner and saved a lot of time with the images though.

silentbicycle• 18 years ago

He mentions that in the "Better Ways to Do It" section at the end -- mistakes he made, ways he could have saved time and effort.

something2• 18 years ago

i'm not sure my handwriting would look real to me as if i did that. the appearance of a given letter varies according to its neighbors or the word it's in.

dkasper• 18 years ago

That's why there are things like kerning and ligatures.

something2• 18 years ago

a method to discern these from a sample would be cool. for example the "ti" in "tight" will look different than the "ti" in "ting" because of the difference between my "g" and my "n" irrespective of the "ti".

if this is contemplated in existing solutions, i betray my (vast) ignorance on the topic.

i found the original post interesting because i notice many dozens of "fonts" in my own notes. at a glance the font alone brings back the tone and setting of its scribbling/scribing/boredom/...mood and often helps me remember more than the fact or hint that it is supposed to represent- the way i perceived it at the time.

further- i have heard of ways to listen to the sound of a person's keyboard over time and know what they're typing. with enough info, you could know not only what, but how they're typing it. well-tuned, you might be able to get a machine to know how you would've written something, not just what it would look like given a one element sample of the glyph that represents the single keystroke(s).

not exactly related, but i always liked http://www.fuzzmail.org/ for adding a dimension, maybe in the extrovert direction. for me, what we're talking about would be more introverted, me recognizing myself like i'd recognize a recording of my voice. me, not the way i hear myself when i talk, but the way i know i sound.

in fact- for the anthropologists with sway over PG, it might be interesting to randomly "fuzzmail" (with willing participants, of course) the comment threads on here and see just how people compose what are very often, alternately and at once, extremely insightful/kind/thought(ful/less)/human comments.

SingAlong• 18 years ago

Yaaaahooooo!!!

This seems to be a great idea. I can surely use this to create a fonts for my work.

I once wanted to create a logo for my web app with my own handwriting. So I wrote the name of the website on paper and photographed it. I got a very blurry image. So dumped the idea. I never thought it was possible.

But I can't create a font for my handwriting. Since my handwriting is partly cursive and partly non-cursive. I write the first and second letters of a word in cursive and the rest in non-cursive. And my 'r','o' 'y' and 'g' vary a lot. They depend on where they appear in the word.

How to make a font of your handwriting with free software

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