: Handwriting font that at random picks characters? First, I don't know much about creating fonts. I work with a childrens book author and want to create a font from her handwriting. This means

@Cody3331749

Pseudo randomness with OpenTypes calt feature

Real randomness is not possible. There is a part in the OpenType specification but support for this is non existing. But you can create a pretty random looking font with the OpenType calt feature.

This chapter from the OpenType Cookbook describes (at the bottom) three different strategies: opentypecookbook.com/common-techniques.html
The following tutorial has another description: glyphsapp.com/tutorials/features-part-3-advanced-contextual-alternates
Depending on the strategy you choose creating the feature file for randomness by hand might be a frustrating experience. Programming a script to build the feature file is a more realistic way.

Edit:
In the meantime I finished a project of mine (Calligraphr) which enables even complete font novices to create a font with randomized letters.

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@Ogunnowo857

There is a perfect example of a truly randomizing font: punk by Donald Knuth. It can be easily used in any TeX package e.g. in ConTeXt (see: Hans Hagen, The Punk Module).

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@Jennifer810

Luc Devroye has the best list I've ever seen of "random" fonts. I remember reading his paper Random fonts for the simulation of handwriting several years ago and being fascinated. In fact, I was searching for that paper when I found this question.

Some of the links are defunct, but you can find for example MyFont on the Wayback Machine. I have never tried MyFont and do not endorse it etc., but it seems to be basically what you want.

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@Ravi4787994

Randomness is possible.*

You just have to be really smart and really dedicated to make it happen. Serious programming chops required.

Most of the very natural looking handwriting fonts you'll find use contextual alternates and complicated ligature substitution. This actually achieves a more natural result than randomization.

Some great examples of consistent substitutions can be seen in the script fonts from by Sudtipos. Their recent release Rolling Pen is an excellent specimen.


Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates,
swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full
potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features
for advanced typography.




* History lesson

For those of you who remember the great Beowolf font from Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland, it's back. Kind of.



Here's the story from FontFont:


FF Beowolf was born at the end of the dark and murky 1980s when Just
van Rossum and Erik van Blokland found a way to change the programming
in PostScript fonts. When printed, each point in each letter in every
word on the page would move randomly, giving the letters a shaken,
distraught appearance. Initially dubbed “RandomFont”, van Blokland and
van Rossum created three versions with increasing degrees of potential
randomness and FontShop released it as FF Beowolf, the first typeface
with a mind of its own.

The technology in FF Beowolf wasn’t what computer and printer
manufacturers had in mind for desktop publishing. So, while it worked
great (if a tad slow) through most of the 1990s, FF Beowolf was
eventually barred from performing its magic: pesky things like printer
drivers and operating systems learned to ignore the non-standard. FF
Beowolf seemed relegated to mere recollection.

But OpenType technology brought new hope, forging paths in the
typetech continuum which would eventually lead to a new generation of
RandomFonts. Each glyph in each font has ten alternates and a massive
Faustian brain to control the mayhem. Specially developed and
hellishly complex software, nearly ninety thousand glyphs, and an army
of purpose-built ’bots took days to forge the OpenType features no
ordinary type tool could have assembled.

[...] The randomness performs on screen in any application on MacOS
and Windows which supports OpenType.

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@Ann6370331

I have been working in a random replacement script and my conclusion is there are not a magic recipe with a single script, instead this, the programming must be the result of multiple scripts that will change the result multiple times by using several lookups. The answers above is just the first part to obtain the random replacement but these need to be improoved with many other classes and lookups. I'm sure the result I obtained work fine and you can see it here:


If you meed more information about how to programm randomly your font please feel free to contact me at my fan page on FB: Corradine Fonts.

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@Dunderdale640

OpenType technology doesn't allow randomness so ‘randomness’ must be simulated.

OpenType ‘randomness’ can be simulated using groups of letters know as alternates. The idea that you could have 3 groups or more of the same letters that rotate; you’d expect to never see the same letter more than once in a word. Unfortunately due to letter combinations, repetitions will appear.

It might not be quite the font you are looking for but a good example of how some people have tried to solve this is during the development of Liza (Explained really well here: www.underware.nl/case-studies/random-vs-clever/)
They have a 1-2-3 grouping system of letters that they call the rotator. However, they also created the Swapper to work on top of the Rotator.


The Swapper looks back along the line to check if unlucky repetitions
appear. If so, it'll correct the repetition of identical glyphs (in
direct neighbourhood).


If this isn’t enough they also mention OpenType randomness based on language and stylistic alternates too.

This is probably the most complete example I know of for simulated randomness unless anyone else knows anything better!?

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@Lengel450

Some OpenType fonts have several designs for a particular character and randomly show one so the text looks more naturally handwritten. For example fontfeed.com/archives/upcoming-fontfont-mister-k-pro/

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