Each glyph in each font has ten alternates and a massiveįaustian brain to control the mayhem. Typetech continuum which would eventually lead to a new generation of FFīeowolf seemed relegated to mere recollection.īut OpenType technology brought new hope, forging paths in the Great (if a tad slow) through most of the 1990s, FF Beowolf wasĮventually barred from performing its magic: pesky things like printerĭrivers and operating systems learned to ignore the non-standard. Manufacturers had in mind for desktop publishing. The technology in FF Beowolf wasn’t what computer and printer Randomness and FontShop released it as FF Beowolf, the first typeface Van Rossum created three versions with increasing degrees of potential Initially dubbed “RandomFont”, van Blokland and Word on the page would move randomly, giving the letters a shaken,ĭistraught appearance. When printed, each point in each letter in every Van Rossum and Erik van Blokland found a way to change the programming

Kind of.įF Beowolf was born at the end of the dark and murky 1980s when Just Potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType featuresįor those of you who remember the great Beowolf font from Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland, it's back. Swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, Their recent release Rolling Pen is an excellent specimen. Some great examples of consistent substitutions can be seen in the script fonts from by Sudtipos. This actually achieves a more natural result than randomization. Most of the very natural looking handwriting fonts you'll find use contextual alternates and complicated ligature substitution. You just have to be really smart and really dedicated to make it happen. This is probably the most complete example I know of for simulated randomness unless anyone else knows anything better!? If this isn’t enough they also mention OpenType randomness based on language and stylistic alternates too. If so, it'll correct the repetition of identical glyphs (in The Swapper looks back along the line to check if unlucky repetitionsĪppear. However, they also created the Swapper to work on top of the Rotator. They have a 1-2-3 grouping system of letters that they call the rotator. 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: ) Unfortunately due to letter combinations, repetitions will appear. 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. OpenType ‘randomness’ can be simulated using groups of letters know as alternates. OpenType technology doesn't allow randomness so ‘randomness’ must be simulated.

Handwriting fonts