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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)

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.

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.

Kudos to you and the journey. I appreciate your honesty honestly about giving up on open source alternative for a quite cheap alternative for something you get to keep as your own is not a bad tradeoff.

Your story resonates. I am a self-taught creative and I get stubborn at times about wanting to use/bend a specific technology/tool to achieve a task; maybe it's a sunk cost fallacy OCD thing.

Your site design has character.

PS: Bookmarked your site with the tags - fonts, developer-blog, creative-sites, boutique-designs... on my firefox browser.

I wonder if there's any way to transform this approach taken by Amy Goodchild into actual font files: https://www.amygoodchild.com/blog/cursive-handwriting-in-jav...

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.

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n9209f8s3vc?hl=en-US&gl=U...

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.

This is fantastic. Thank you for sharing. I am currently preparing for a workshop with children in which I want to let them “draw” their own website/web-apps. So far I did not plan to let them create their own fonts, as I did not know how to, but now I know. Thanks to you!

Ps: if you have any other ideas how to make such a workshop for children more exciting, please let me know! For instance, I wanted to let them create paper prototypes and then turn them into working click dummies so to cross the bridge between analogue and digital in way that feels natural to kids. Btw, by “kids” I refer to children at the age of 8-10 years old.

I was abused as a kid so my handwriting is crap. I also don't know cursive very well. I feel like if they made a font of my handwriting everyone would say, "woah, oh! There goes Mr. Poory McIrresponsible Parents!" If you tried to pull it up in Microsoft Word the font (typeface) name would be, "Danny Wets The Bed."

That's an aside though; great job mate mega post!

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.

Others who have gone down a similar path:

- Amy Goodchild: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40408291

- Kathleen Tuite: https://kaflurbaleen.blogspot.com/2012/12/creating-font-from...

- Julia Evans: https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/08/08/handwritten-font/

I did this in a much more manual way in 02006: http://canonical.org/~kragen/oilpencil/

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.

There was retail boxed software that would do this on Windows 95 that included worksheets and software. You'd write examples in each square of the worksheet that you would then scan in and convert to TTF with their proprietary software.

I would say it seems like a simple enough task for a weekend project but I know better.

I did this for my old blog back in the 2000s - I used an online service that produced a pretty bad font that I could clean up using FontForge into something reasonable. It was a fun novelty but my penmanship is pretty bad and once in a while I would get flamed in the comments in my own handwriting.

For those who were hoping for the physical version of this, I recommend the Stuff Made Here Video on the topic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQO2XTP7QDw

This handwritten font by Ulrike includes ligatures and absolutely amazing https://liebefonts.com/fonts/liebeheide

I'm developing a web open source application to create your own handwritten font. It's already functional, and I have plans to add new features. I encourage you to try it out. https://ownfonts.cielo.ovh/ Here's the source code: https://github.com/c4p0/OwnFonts If you're interested in collaborating on the project, you can send me a message on GitHub.

I always thought this was such a cool idea to preserve the handwriting style of someone you love (I adore my partner's handwriting), but the conversion to a font never seems to keep the spacing right, as you show in the final comparison.

I've been thinking of tinkering with an image to image generation model to convert text output from the font into something that looks closer to the handwritten version. Seems like it should be possible, but you need a lot of data.

The author’s experience summarises well the sad state of GUI apps, especially in the open source world.

That’s why we end up using command line tools and text-based interfaces. Or I end up writing code to do things.

It’s not that I dislike the idea of GUI apps, it’s that in practice, they make me have a really bad time, and usually don’t even get the job done.

Is the tech good enough for it to be undetectable. If I were to hypothetically use it to complete the handwritten assignments that my old school professors demand (in much of the yappier courses) would this slip through without getting caught. This is all hypothetical of course.

What a bummer the website https://www.calligraphr.com is a subscription model. I could impulsively pay $100 to get my handwriting as a TTF font and be quite happy about it.

The description of trying to use FontForge cracked me up, I recall trying it myself a while ago and it going very similarly!

I had an iPhone 2g back in 2010 when we had the first app store and cydia.

I had seen an app where one could draw each alphabet and it would spit out a font file....

They broke it with a paid update and I have never seen another app like that

I might try this with my own handwriting. How well does it replicate an indecipherable scrawl?

Honestly, this idea is intriguing enought that I might actually pay for a month of that service. I'm willing to make that my first software purchase because I want to support symbiotic business practices like the one described (as opposed to adversarial rent-seeking ones seen all too often these days).

>Next, I wanted to change the heading fonts from a monospace font to something cursive

The font created is print, not cursive.

Hmm. A font of my own handwriting sounds like unbreakable encryption!

Related:

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!

If i do that you will need archaeologists to find out what i have writen

The kerning is not great.

Cool，I also want a font for my handwriting

That font doesn’t suck.

However, I can tell that you’re introvertive (retalics), a little ADHD (open/unconnected O character), have OCD tendencies (highly legible script), and borderline type A (lines in top of x close together and Fs)