
LaTeX tricks to make madman Cthulhu worshipper-like text - Swizec
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/29402/how-do-i-make-my-document-look-like-it-was-written-by-an-cthulhu-worshipping-madm
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sneak
My girlfriend wrote a paper this year about constructed languages and the
people who create and use them, and typeset the title in elvish. Did you know
that there are not one or two elvish typefaces for LaTeX, but in fact seven or
eight?

Despite my abiding love of capitalism and enterprise, it brought me great joy
to know that there are hackers out there still slaving away on the entirely
esoteric and not 100% of us have yet caught the "everything should be about
revenue" bug.

~~~
StavrosK
Understandable, since there isn't only one "elvish" language. Tolkien alone
has two, Quenya and Sindarin. There are others as well.

~~~
mhd
If I recall, that's not the reason for the abundance of fonts, as both Quenya
and Sindarin use the same script. I think most of what you could find on LaTeX
is your basic Tengwar script, but in different styles, so that they look like
they were from different historical periods (one looked a bit like Celtic
uncials, one almost like blackletter etc.).

(Boy, I'm really showing my nerd colors in this thread)

~~~
StavrosK
Hmm, I'll take your word for it, as I haven't looked, but I wouldn't be
surprised if some of the typefaces were runic (Cirth) rather than Tengwar (the
celtic ones you mentioned, in particular).

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nkurz

      I̛͈̮ͦ͆̀ş̵͎̬͙͕̤͕͔̰ͥͧ̉͐ͧ̚͘ ͬͬ̎̒ͪ͑͌́҉͖̯t̩͚̥̜̲̞ͪ͂̎ͪ̌ͭ̒h̨̘͖̐͋̾͂ͯe̫̩̩͇̾ͪ̐͆͂͒̓r͊̓ͬ͑̚͞͡͏̰̼̤̙͉̜̣̖e̾ͫ̅ͮ̾ͪ̓͋͒͏̘̟ ͎̪̪̯̫͔̗͆́̈́̎̏́į̷̮̯̯̰̆̒ͧ̾ş͍̦̗̺̤̟̝̃̀ͨͤ̓ͧͨ̚ ̼̦͎̪̣̣͈͋̒ͦ́̂ͣa̦̘̱͐̉͒ͪͮͤͤ̑͘ͅ ͩͬ̊̀҉̬̙͎̥̩L̑ͯ͏̸̗̰̺̤͖̳̗̟̱́a̭̭̠̻̋ͯ̈̌̽͛̀͜ͅT̶͔̲͇̩̥̪͊͆́́ẽ̵̴̩͙͔̲̖̗̟̥̯̒ͣ̑̉ͯ͢Xͭ̉̕͏̬͈̣̗̥ ̛͔͕̩̈̒͛̾̌͆̈͢p̟͉̄̽͛̆ͭͬ͢a̵̦̯̥͕ͭ̎ͯ̐ͬ̄̚c͖͕̥͇̘͙̬ͦ͑͘k͔̹̰̆͛ͥ͗ͩ͂̀ͬa̡͚̗͚͓ͦ̂̾̑ͪ͞g̶̭̖̺͈̺̹ͫ̋̀̈̊ͤ͆e̦͈͚ͥ̍ͤ̉̊͗ ̶̲̘̙̣̗͍́ͤ̈́̈͒ͭ̓̎ͯf̵̧̳͎̙̮͕̠͆̓o̢͎͑ͧ̀̋͢r͓̩̯̝ͦ͛̀̍ͧ͌ͥ̓ ̷͉̣̪̍̌̎̓̆ͦ̃́́Z̧̪̳͚̯̣̻̪̾͌͒ͩ̓ͅa͋͂ͤ̒̔͏̝̰̹̱͖͔̰ḻ̰ͧ́̿̚g̸̘̑͂͘͡o̬̘͈͖̦̳̠̤̭͛̇̂͑̋͢?̵̡͈̠̙͛ͩ͆̑́̇͜
    

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Zalgo>

Edit: Judging by the initial votes, maybe self-referential isn't the best
approach. Trying again, "Is there is a LaTeX package for Zalgo?". Zalgo is
form of (usually) Unicode text degradation used to simulate insanity and
decay. It's frequently associated with Cthulu. I offer it as a real
suggestion, and think it suggests a Lovecraftian madman quite well.

~~~
StavrosK
I have never seen Zalgo text work on any of my computers or browsers, and I've
encountered it a lot over the years. Is it mostly a windows thing?

~~~
brazzy
Basically, it needs a font rendering engine that is both poweful enough to
display lots of combined diacritics from various scripts in parallel and
lenient enough to actually try and do it by stacking them way outside the
line.

It might be that only Windows has such an engine; font rendering is certainly
one of Microsoft's strength.

I know that it works in LibreOffice (does that leave font rendering to the
OS?) and in Omegle on Firefox (what renders the font here? Flash? Firefox?
Windows?).

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loevborg
This is as good an occasion as any to note that tex.stackexchange.com is a
fantastic place with friendly and competent contributors. There's already a
wealth of informative answers that one can search through, enormously more
useful than searching usenet or mailing lists. For those yet unconvinced, it's
also an example that web 2.0 really works.

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mhd
I'm not so happy with the result. The parchment is too three-dimensional,
which clashes with the font. I'd recommend regular (or calligraphy) paper
(maybe printed with a non-white background, if your printer is good enough),
and then "aging" it. Tea or coffee is usually a good method, although simple
crumpling might suffice.

Also, either for a medieval source or a 1920s document, block lettering seems
a bit off.

But this really shows what's possible if you have programmatic control over
your typesetting. I really should do some (La)TeX again…

~~~
gchpaco
For a 1920s document, I would actually expect it to be (badly) typewritten,
but perhaps I'm injecting too much of modern myth of the times. Certainly
cursive handwriting was considered to be vital at the time.

As for medieval, you can actually do pretty well with the medieval Italics or
my personal favorite, the Carolingian miniscule. Blackletter is good for late
period but it's very difficult for modern folks to read.

~~~
mhd
Not as hard as some period cursive variants (e.g. German Sütterlin). But once
you go that far back, you'd also have to emulate the language, and I don't
think that most GMs are a) up to that and b) willing to inflict this upon
their players. Some fake Shakespearean might do, of course…

One could scour the net for a handwritten font that looks slightly arabic,
considering where the Mythos' most famous madman came from…

Back in the days, I had some Postscript document that actually included some
font, based on Edsger Dijkstra's handwriting. Given that PS is a full-fledge
programming language, too, that could be the basis for some crazy per-letter
randomization. (Although I bet TeX/MetaFont wizards could do something
similar, and there might even be some OpenType fonts with enough glyph
variants out there already)

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tikhonj
One thing that seems to be missing from the answers is any sort of
(pseudo)random modifications to the resulting text.

Can this sort of thing be done with plain LaTeX? I've seen trivial examples of
randomness using LuaTeX; would that be a practical way to add some randomness
to the typeset text?

~~~
jbri
Really? The answer with the highest upvotes appears to be rotating words to
"random" angles, and links to a post[1] which has minimal code for just doing
that.

[1]:[http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9323/are-there-any-
la...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9323/are-there-any-latex-easter-
eggs/9331#9331)

~~~
tikhonj
I was actually thinking more about the very last sentence of the top answer
where he says he doesn't know how to modify the font-size and spacing
randomly. This led me to assuming the footnote angle thing was somehow
specialized or insufficiently general. I don't really understand the code in
the answer you linked to well enough to see how to apply it more generally.

~~~
jbri
The linked code uses the lcg package for random numbers - see this other
(poorly-named) question[1] for an example of how to use it

[1]:[http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/16768/how-to-
convert-...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/16768/how-to-convert-
number-to-length)

