Hacker News Reader

Comment by certik | Hacker News Reader

I created this cursive handwriting OTF font that you can test in a browser (or any other program):

https://certik.github.io/slabikar-otf/

It correctly connects letters and it can do Czech and Slovak accents. It is based on a Metafont source (to be used in TeX) from Petr Olšák, I wrote Python code that reproduces Metafont's Bezier curves algorithm, generates curves as SVG, then calls Inkscape to convert the curve to its boundary, imports back into Python from SVG and then it generates OTF curves and the final font.

View on HN

Interesting: this cursive feels a lot closer than OP to the cursive i was taught at my Italian Public School: example here http://www.leomajor.pn.it/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/al...

Indeed! The above cursive is a Czechoslovakian style from 1990s (I think it hasn't changed much since then), and most European countries have quite similar cursive. In the United States the cursive is actually similar also, but a few letters are different, notably: z, r, t and most uppercase letters. My kids learn it at public schools here in the U.S., but it is secondary after print style and assignments are not accepted in cursive... (I am sure it varies from school to school though.)

Would you mind if I tried to convert it into a single line opentype-SVG font for plotters?

Please go ahead, that would be great. The output of this script: https://github.com/certik/slabikar-otf/blob/dce9fc9e575f7d6e... creates a single line SVG. The other scripts then feed it to Inkscape and read it back as outline, so you would skip this step. You can then use this script: https://github.com/certik/slabikar-otf/blob/dce9fc9e575f7d6e... to convert to glif and the rest of the pipeline to build the font. I think I implemented single line fonts in glif.py, but if not, it shouldn't be hard to implement. If you are interested in collaborating on this, please let me know, we can add it as another job at the CI to test this mode.

Do you have a plotter? Send some videos and photos once you get it working!

Great work! Any chance that you could add the two letters ö and å?

Å would be the same as ů but with an "a" as base.

Ö would be the same as ä but with an "o" as base.

Yes, we can! Can you please submit a pull request here: https://github.com/certik/slabikar-otf, just add the new character definitions here: https://github.com/certik/slabikar-otf/blob/dce9fc9e575f7d6e..., here is an example how uring (ů) is done: https://github.com/certik/slabikar-otf/blob/dce9fc9e575f7d6e....

What do I need to make this work for arabic script? Is it possible to adapt it at all?

Did you write this up as an article in TUGboat?

If you did, and I missed it, could you let me know the issue number?

If not, please do --- it's amazing!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com