
Create a font from your own handwriting - loki_dx
http://www.myscriptfont.com/
======
Osmium
It'd be nice if there was support for multiple versions of characters and
ligature support. But still, pretty damn cool.

Edit: Seems like they have a new version of the tool on PaintFont.com which
does have support for ligatures!

Edit2: Just tried it in my lunch break. Worked perfectly :) Doesn't look much
like my real handwriting due to the uniform spacing, but definitely fun to
use.

~~~
biot
I've always wondered if that's possible: a font file where if you type the
letter 'A' for example, one of five versions of the letter 'A' is chosen. And
so on for other letters so that a bit of randomness is imparted to the
"writing".

~~~
nsfmc
It is! Doing it right is the hard part since opentype is limited to very
specific kinds of substitutions, so you don't get nondeterministic random, but
you usually get something that appears random-enough. The canonical example of
actually nondet-random is the font Beowulf[0], by letterror, i don't know that
i can do it justice here, research it a bit to really get the story.

Two contemporary examples: Bello Script[1] and Trixie HD, although lots of
people are really pushing opentype's features these days in novel ways.

[0]: [http://letterror.com/fontcatalog/fontfont-
beowolf/](http://letterror.com/fontcatalog/fontfont-beowolf/)

[1]:
[http://www.underware.nl/fonts/bello/features/how_does_it_wor...](http://www.underware.nl/fonts/bello/features/how_does_it_work/)

[2]:
[http://trixiefont.com/story/index.html](http://trixiefont.com/story/index.html)

~~~
specialist
Thanks for the tips. Will definitely investigate.

A buddy of mind wrote HandPlot for AutoCAD (way back in the day). It'd jitter
the HPGL/2 output to mimic a drafter's pen drawn technique. The visual "draft"
effect encouraged dialog, whereas the precision of normal plots shutdown
discussion. (Looks like it's now a built in feature called Visual Styles,
hmmm).

I've always wanted to do the same for hand lettering. Any one who's done
drafting on the boards knows what I'm talking about. People used to take
_great pride_ in their unique lettering. Somehow parlaying that into one's
design/contract drawings would be awesome.

I looked at PostScript and TrueType, but couldn't figure out how to randomize
the letter forms. I never looked at OpenType.

~~~
jared314
> The visual "draft" effect encouraged dialog

That sounds similar to the reasoning behind Balsamiq Mockups and other wire-
framing/diagramming tools that look intentionally "crude".

~~~
specialist
Absolutely. It's something cognitive. The mind is more creative when there's
blanks to fill in.

I played around a bit to see if I could style HTML+CSS to look sketch / toon /
hand drawn. Precisely what I thought Balsamiq was doing. Wouldn't that be
awesome?

Alas, I didn't get very far. I chopped a hand drawn box into 9 GIFs (upper
left, upper middle, upper right, ... lower right) and attached them to a DIV.
A lot of work. And the long edges could only be stretched, vs repeated. And I
couldn't fathom a way to "owner draw" (old Win32 dev here, sorry) other
widgets like dropdowns and scrollbars.

If there was a way to access each widget's vectors, then a hand drawn style is
totally feasible.

Perhaps once zoomable UIs become common place.

~~~
michaelbuddy
svg might help you there, inkscape has a jitter filter. It creates more vector
nodes, but it would display on a webpage and is open format like html

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btbuildem
You know what would be amazing? Some sample images of handwriting and example
sentences made with the generated font.

~~~
dbarlett
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.kk.org/cooltools/2013/07/font.j...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.kk.org/cooltools/2013/07/font.jpg)

~~~
tobltobs
What do you mean by "auxiliary characters" do not work and what where the
errors while importing?

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peter-fogg
This is really neat, but the main reason I type as much as possible is because
my handwriting is _awful_. I'd gladly use a service that made my scrawl a bit
more legible.

~~~
croisillon
I believe you can work on your handwriting the same way you work on drawing.

I learned to write pretty much by myself after my parents taught me to read
and I didn't practice the m's and the o's exercises in 1st class (since I
already _could_ write). This ended up in a horrible handwriting, which a lot
of teachers criticized without offering any solution.

At the age of 14 I received an old metal dip-pen and I loved it but I didn't
like the outcome, so... I started practicing, writing alphabets, letters,
words, sentences, just for the pleasure of using the pen and finding the right
shape for each letter. It is still a work in process though as I sometimes
change the way I shape one or another letter and I still from time to time
write down a couple alphabets.

I'm not claiming my handwriting is now fabulous, far from that, but I'm at
least not ashamed of it and would gladly use it as a font (where appropriate).

~~~
bluedino
There's no excuse for illegible handwriting. It can be as simple as taking
your time and making half-decent looking letters.

<\- Tired of attempting to read other's scrawl

~~~
tomjen3
Mah, my time has value, so I will just type it.

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marknutter
Have you _seen_ my handwriting?

~~~
xerophyte12932
its ok bro, we're all key-board people here. our handwritings SUCK! Heck the
best part about a computer science college was that most of the work was on
computers so no more writing! :P

~~~
gamegoblin
I had a theory based class last semester (no computers at all), and haven't
had a real class in which I can't type everything in 2 years. During the
midterm my hand started cramping because I hadn't written anything longer than
a sentence or two at a time in years.

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tobltobs
creator of myscriptfont.com here. myscriptfont.com is an older version. You
can find a better app under paintfont.com.

~~~
jaxn
You are probably sitting on the world's greatest resource for creating captcha
images.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Very smart. I was just thinking about it.

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themodelplumber
Back in the 1990s there used to be computer magazine ads for this. The ads
included spaces for you to hand-write various letters and numbers. Anybody
remember that? Mail it in and they mail you back a font.

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earlz
I made a font like this once. I can't remember what tool I used, but I drew
the characters with a mouse (at the time I did a lot of drawing with the
mouse, so mouse writing was nearly as good as pen writing). It use to be
online even just for the hell of it. Now I'd probably have to look in the
backups.

The big problem I had with my font was that some characters were quite bigger
or smaller than others, despite it "fitting" into the same size box. I wonder
if they managed to fix that some how

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j_s
Microsoft shipped 'My Font Tool for Tablet PC' sometime around 2006. Good luck
finding it now though -- the official download link is broken.

[http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote-help/powertoys-
for...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote-help/powertoys-for-
microsoft-office-onenote-2003-HA001140896.aspx)

    
    
      > This PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition converts your 
      > own handwriting into a TrueType font.

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setitimer
I don't really care for the template model; it won't look like your actual
handwriting because most people don't write individual letters in little boxes
the same way they write sentences.

I would be really impressed if the template consisted of a set of phrases you
had to transcribe, and then it asked you to confirm the letter choices if
there is doubt, and created composites where there are more than one of the
same letter in the sample.

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gus_massa
In the additional letters, the small ñ is missing (Capital Ñ is in the list).
It's a very used letter in Spanish. (Additionaly, the Ç and ç are missing they
are used in Portuguese.)

I don't know how this can be solved in the general case. Maybe add 10 free
letters and ask the user to supply the unicode number, or type/copy the letter
in a text field of the web page.

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ToastyMallows
I tried to use this before, but eventually I reached a paywall, can anyone
confirm if this is still the case?

EDIT: My apoligies, that was
[http://www.yourfonts.com/](http://www.yourfonts.com/) . I'll have to try this
one out I've always wanted to.

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zenith2037
Yes, now I can see my lovely hybrid cursive manuscript scrawl on the screen!

Would be fun to use that's for sure. :D

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overload119
A little while I go I did this in HTML and Javascript, it won't let you
extract a .ttf but the basic idea is there.
[http://fontsie.herokuapp.com/](http://fontsie.herokuapp.com/)

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codereflection
Forget my handwriting, I'm interested in using this for creative font design.

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bjterry
I was going to post a link to an image of this font in vim, which looks quite
funny, but then I realized that I don't know if I want everyone on the
Internet to be able to copy my handwriting.

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xerophyte12932
I have been meaning to this for years! especially in college when faced with a
teacher who forces you to submit hand written work :P

PS: Helps copy pasting in those assignments

~~~
tomjen3
Idiot teacher. I get not wanting to have students use laptops in the front of
the class, but as long as you don't copy from others how you produce your
college assignments shouldn't be the teachers decision.

Anyway if he ever saw my handwriting he would change is policy - it actively
scares people.

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marknadal
This is more than fantastic! Just imagine making custom icon fonts to use on
websites! A full symbol set done in 5 minutes!

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cududa
Man, this brings back memories of calling into The Screensavers in 2004 - this
tools has been around close to a decade!

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borplk
Can someone who has tried this comment on the quality and experience?

~~~
actionscripted
Super easy, very nice result. It smooths the scanned forms, so you get clean
letters. Took about 5 minutes.

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dwc
Can I have a font of EWD's handwriting instead of my own?

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tomjen3
[http://www.fonts101.com/fonts/view/Uncategorized/34398/Dijks...](http://www.fonts101.com/fonts/view/Uncategorized/34398/Dijkstra)

Though I don't get why you would want to, I have seen far more beautiful
handwritting elsewhere (it is certainly prettier than mine, but that isn't
saying something).

~~~
dwc
I've always thought his handwritten stuff was striking, and wished my
handwriting was as distinctive.

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skion
For me that would result in the ugliest font ever.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I think there would be a tough competition on being the ugliest. I challenge
you! :)

