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from the the-whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts dept.
What if someone discovered that the specifications in a font file could be Turing complete? What if that person realized that a font could, therefore, perform computations. How about addition?
Proving the Turing Completeness of Fonts:
The goal is:
I wanted to try to implement addition. The input glyph stream would be of the form "=1234+5678=" and the shaping process would turn that string into "6912".
The sheer number of details precludes a simple summary. Mix a little recursion with a strong helping of remapping to implement some grammar productions and voila! The font file is available on Google drive.
What "creative" [mis]applications of this technology can you think of? Define a font file that has a 1:1 mapping of all ASCII characters... except replace all instances of "123" with "456". How could you recognize this had happened to you?
Consider: embedding it in a web page or a PDF document. Making it a new (default) printer font.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:04AM (1 child)
I have always wanted a font that would automatically apply appropriate swirls and curlicues to the letters like this [pinimg.com] or that [ssl-images-amazon.com]. I know that many fonts exist that have extra glyphs with swirls and/or curlicues but I have to find these glyphs and apply them. What I dream of is a font that does it itself by looking at the context of letters. Such a font would compensate for my sincere lack of artistic abilities, meaning I could just write "Medusa" and out would come something like the first example.
BTW: I just realised that if you look closely at the letter M in the first example, you can see the letter is in two completely separate parts, the first looking slightly like a capital A and the other like a capital C.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 4, Touché) by krishnoid on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:08AM
You're thinking too small. If I typed 'Medusa', I'd want an assortment of snakes coming out of it.