I did something similar for my wedding website back in 2013. We used a mail-in service that produced a decent TTF, and then I converted it to a WOFF. Still online at https://ruthandjosh.net/story/ (warning, millennial cringe ahead)
stavros · 10m ago
Well that was delightful.
dotancohen · 2h ago
Thank you for that cringe! What a great way to end the week. Shabbat shalom.
Weetile · 1h ago
So is it true that Ruth had champagne on the flight without you?
caminanteblanco · 45m ago
So wholesome, and here's a belated congratulations!
aswinmohanme · 3h ago
warmed my heart, wishing you a great life together
password4321 · 2h ago
AFAIK Microsoft Font Maker still works (poorly?) for free with Windows Ink styluses. I don't remember what I used decades ago but I think it was a PowerToy for Windows Tablet PC.
My handwriting is exceedingly bad, and it gets worse every time I do it. It's sort of a feedback loop; my handwriting is bad so I type everything, and since I never practice my handwriting it gets bad. I think if someone made a font based on my handwriting it could be used as a cryptographic hash.
I do like the idea of it though; even though I don't think it's less personal to type a message than handwrite it, it feels less personal. Having a font based on handwriting might help with that.
dse1982 · 3h ago
When I was a teenager I made a ttf-font from the handwriting of a girl I was in love with as a gift for her. Man I underestimated that task seriously. I used some tool that was included in the Corel Draw Suite, scanned a sheet of paper on which she had written me the alphabet (in upper and in lower case) and vectorized everything by hand. It was so. Much. Work. Since then a quarter of a century has passed and it is one of those stories which leaves me amazed at the amount of naive stubborn energy of youth. I mean it was just for a birthday but I spent so much time on it and most of that time I didn't really know what I was doing. But somehow I succeeded, probably just because I didn't know any better.
snapetom · 2h ago
So what happened with her? Was the effort worth it? Happily ever after?
I'd bet it would be matter of "translating" those Chaikin's paths to Bézier. Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf and whatnot.
gucci-on-fleek · 2h ago
> Then you could generate Metafont fonts from that, and from that you could get ttf, otf
It's unfortunately not very easy to generate modern TTF/OTF fonts from Metafont sources. If you're careful to not use any crazy pens, you can compile with Metapost and then import the outlines into FontForge, but it's still fairly tricky to make everything work properly.
All the steps I did at the time should still work today, and they may be of some interest if you're trying to do the thing Chris gave up on in "Failing to do it myself", perhaps because you're dissatisfied with the results of the alternative approaches.
al_borland · 4h ago
There used to be a form to fill out in Sky Mall to be able to do this through some service. Back in the days where you would fill it out by hand and mail your handwriting to them.
They say that you remember more when handwriting than when typing. I believe that. One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it?
I would think that part of the value would be in seeing the information written in your own handwriting, which makes me suspect that having a font like this that you could digitize into might be better than writing by hand (whic probably provides some of the memory boost) and then digitizing into a traditional font.
jkingsman · 2h ago
Perhaps the visual aspect is responsible for a bit, but I know that even notes that I never reviewed after the fact but handwrote had more sticking power in my head than when I typed.
Both my partner and I used tablets for notetaking through college and found it at least analogous if not superior to handwritten notes, since it became easier to link topics that you might otherwise need to back-reference on paper that could instead just be a big arrow. Lots more freedom to use arrows, visual linkages, and asides when you weren't constrained by 8.5x11 paper (which maybe allows a bit of that but otherwise forces linearity, more or less).
dotancohen · 2h ago
> One thing I have wondered about is what if you write on a tablet and then it digitizes your handwriting. Do you still get the same benefit, from the process of having handwritten it?
In my experience, you do. I use a Boox E-ink tablet to write on, and I completely concur that just using the stylus to write things commits them to my memory. The things that I've typed, I have to go back and look at.
clickety_clack · 1h ago
I might try this with my own handwriting. How well does it replicate an indecipherable scrawl?
jdranczewski · 1h ago
The description of trying to use FontForge cracked me up, I recall trying it myself a while ago and it going very similarly!
>Next, I wanted to change the heading fonts from a monospace font to something cursive
The font created is print, not cursive.
wjrb · 3h ago
Maybe cursive in a "Comic Sans in the default 'cursive' fallback font on Windows" kind of way.
spcebar · 3h ago
At least in the world of web, cursive is a typographic term referring to fonts that aren't sans or sans serif and are typically used for decorative purposes.
OJFord · 54m ago
Even like this where it's not just not 'joined-up', but not even independent cursive characters? This is just printed characters, as GP says, this seems particularly relevant because I'd think the hardest part of doing this with cursive handwriting would be all the combinations of the ways different letters flow together - if you restrict yourself to independent characters then you remove that problem.
pessimizer · 1h ago
I'm pretty sure that's not true in the world of typography. Cursive there afaik mostly means that it has a ton of ligatures (i.e. a ton of "sorts.")
Fonts that are decorative, when I worked in prepress, were simply called "decorative." It just meant "not for body text" i.e. hard or annoying to read. I assume in the past it meant "don't buy a ton of these, and none in small sizes" because you weren't ever going to be putting a bunch on a page.
samyar · 2h ago
If i do that you will need archaeologists to find out what i have writen
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=U...
I do like the idea of it though; even though I don't think it's less personal to type a message than handwrite it, it feels less personal. Having a font based on handwriting might help with that.
It's unfortunately not very easy to generate modern TTF/OTF fonts from Metafont sources. If you're careful to not use any crazy pens, you can compile with Metapost and then import the outlines into FontForge, but it's still fairly tricky to make everything work properly.
All the steps I did at the time should still work today, and they may be of some interest if you're trying to do the thing Chris gave up on in "Failing to do it myself", perhaps because you're dissatisfied with the results of the alternative approaches.
I would think that part of the value would be in seeing the information written in your own handwriting, which makes me suspect that having a font like this that you could digitize into might be better than writing by hand (whic probably provides some of the memory boost) and then digitizing into a traditional font.
Both my partner and I used tablets for notetaking through college and found it at least analogous if not superior to handwritten notes, since it became easier to link topics that you might otherwise need to back-reference on paper that could instead just be a big arrow. Lots more freedom to use arrows, visual linkages, and asides when you weren't constrained by 8.5x11 paper (which maybe allows a bit of that but otherwise forces linearity, more or less).
Show HN: AI tool to turn handwriting into a font (June 2025, 0 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268487
Coding my handwriting (May 2024, 75 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291
... and probably quite a few more!
The font created is print, not cursive.
Fonts that are decorative, when I worked in prepress, were simply called "decorative." It just meant "not for body text" i.e. hard or annoying to read. I assume in the past it meant "don't buy a ton of these, and none in small sizes" because you weren't ever going to be putting a bunch on a page.