Handwritten.js
Creative
handwriting generation
SHOW HN2020
How HN took it
12 positive, 25 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 13 critical, out of 54 comments about the project. Thread score -0.02.
Execution: 1 for, 11 againstIdea: 8 for, 1 againstDesign: 2 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Output looks realistic and fun to play with
From 4 comments
This is really neat! I love how it looks, and the selection of styles. A couple of times, using Style #2, it generated a bunch of loops at the end: Text: "The quick brown fox,…
MikeTheGreat on HNThis is amazing. It's cool how you can drag the legibility slider up and down while it's writing and it responds live. It looks the most realistic to me when I alternate between…
playpause on HNJust tried it, font looks great on paper. I don’t have too many uses for this, but I bet it’ll be pretty handy for people who are still addicted to reading notes from printed…
elorm on HNWonderful! And as it generates single stroke SVG exports, I can output to a laser cutter and have it write for me :) I can't think of a practical use for this, but that's not…
detritus on HN
Interesting vector/stroke output for design uses
From 2 comments
Having played with this a bit - if you can flesh it out a bit, I am sure you can monetize this. I've been dicking around with it for an hour or two and I'm getting results that -…
detritus on HNWonderful! And as it generates single stroke SVG exports, I can output to a laser cutter and have it write for me :) I can't think of a practical use for this, but that's not…
detritus on HN
Objections
Repeated letters and loops appear in some styles (e.g. 'x', 'fox')
From 3 comments
This is really neat! I love how it looks, and the selection of styles. A couple of times, using Style #2, it generated a bunch of loops at the end: Text: "The quick brown fox,…
MikeTheGreat on HNThis is super cool! A random FYI: the demo seems to consistently fail on the letter x when using style #9 and typing out: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog I tried a…
sbarre on HNTry "fox" in style 2 with maximum legibility. It goes loop-the-loop several times.
TheNewAndy on HN
Letters look too uniform, like a font
From 3 comments
How realistic is it to have no joined letters? Do many people really write large scale texts letter by letter with space between each? Sadly, the screenshot looks obviously…
sago on HNI don’t get this project. This is nothing special, you can very easily spot that every T is identical. You might as well just use a handwritten font.
wonderlg on HNThis is insane busywork that I hated in college (xUSSR, 20+ years ago). I would scrutinize the example, though. I don't know how "clean" the documents are expected to be, but the…
galkk on HN
Blank output or errors on some devices (WebGL backend error)
From 2 comments
It’s giving blank output on iOS or is it because the model takes time to load? Also, is there any chance we can fine tune the model for each user by taking their handwriting in a…
navanchauhan on HNYup, I did use the write button. It works on my laptop though. I checked the console and it was indeed throwing an error "Error: Backend name 'webgl' not found in registry"
navanchauhan on HN
Requests
Add a license to the project
From 2 comments
Hi, I like this, and found your project at Github. Could you add licence to your project, please! https://github.com/sjvasquez/handwriting-synthesis
mushishi on HNI second this. Please add a license!
ldd on HN
Train on a user's own handwriting
From 3 comments
It’s giving blank output on iOS or is it because the model takes time to load? Also, is there any chance we can fine tune the model for each user by taking their handwriting in a…
navanchauhan on HNHow much data is needed to train the model to replicate a specific person's handwriting? Could this recreate my hand writing with less than a page of notes in my own handwriting?
aketchum on HNHow would you go about creating a minimal/medium source of input to train this? Could you create a 'written test' type thing - a couple of pages of selected forms of repeated…
detritus on HN
Export as a font file
From 1 comment
It would be great if this could output a generated font file, which can then be used on the web etc.
gibs0ns on HN
Questions
How much handwriting data is needed to mimic a person's style
From 2 comments
This looks very interesting. I wonder how much data would be required in order to imitate a particular handwriting style? i.e. if I know someone with a lovely penmanship and I…
pdamoc on HNHow much data is needed to train the model to replicate a specific person's handwriting? Could this recreate my hand writing with less than a page of notes in my own handwriting?
aketchum on HN
Why the output is slow
From 2 comments
That's super-cool. Honestly that's what I was expecting the submission to be. When I looked at the example image in the original submission, the same letters all look basically…
crazygringo on HNIt's not intentionally slowed down. The sampling process is computationally heavy and you'll notice improved performance when running it on better hardware. There are many…
sjv on HN
Alternatives named
Handwriting fonts
From 2 comments
I don’t get this project. This is nothing special, you can very easily spot that every T is identical. You might as well just use a handwritten font.
wonderlg on HNIs this different than a font?
smabie on HN
OpenType contextual alternates for random glyphs
From 2 comments
> Can a font pick randomly between different versions of the same glyph? In theory, yes, OpenType Contextual Alternates can do this. See "Introducing variety" on this page:…
zimpenfish on HNYou might consider turning this into an OpenType font including all the random alternates:…
montroser on HN
Pen plotters such as AxiDraw
From 1 comment
Bulk mail is often produced using a letterpress-style machine. Personalized mail, on the other hand, is usually "handwritten" using a pen plotter (e.g., AxiDraw).…
ziari on HN
sjvasquez handwriting-synthesis
From 2 comments
Non-statistical methods of imitating handwriting are always fairly easy to identify as synthetic due to the uniformity of strokes and unnatural kerning (among other things). Even…
sjv on HNThanks for sharing. If you don't mind, did you use Graves 2013 RNN or something recent/more advanced?
fizixer on HN