Hey HN — This is a simple web app that allows you to enter text and watch as an in-browser neural network generates the corresponding handwriting in real time. I’m happy to hear feedback or answer questions about how it works!
Very neat! Would you be willing to share more about how you're implementing the in-browser neural network? Doesn't look like webassembly, and I don't see you load any external libraries, just download a binary with content-type "application/macbinary".
I implemented the network from scratch in vanilla javascript. The file is just a custom binary file containing the names, shapes, and weights of the network parameters. If you have more specific questions, feel free to ask them.
Outputs are sampled from a probability distribution, and increasing the legibility effectively concentrates probability density around more likely outcomes. So you're correct that it's just altering variation. The general technique is referred to as 'adjusting the temperature of the sampling distribution'.
It seems that the legibility slider is inverted. Low legibility (left most position) is much easier to read than high legibility (right most position) when I tried playing with the slider.
Back around 2000 my startup used hand written business cards. There were only a few of us so my artist wife simply wrote them (not using fancy calligraphy, simply clear printed handwriting) and we printed them up on the usual card stock.
I remember handing one to a VC who was mighty impressed and said, "wow, the software you used is amazing. Each character varies slightly. I'm impressed."
We didn't get an investment from their firm though; impressive as the cards may have been our actual product didn't appeal to them.
I love stuff like this! I find it's quite a lot of fun to play with.
Style 6 seems to have a little bug handling the letter combination "ex" at higher legibility. Try the phrase "I had to collect things from my ex" to see what I mean. It goes delightfully crazy off the side of the page.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] threadHow does the legibility work? It seems to decrease variation the higher it is.
I remember handing one to a VC who was mighty impressed and said, "wow, the software you used is amazing. Each character varies slightly. I'm impressed."
We didn't get an investment from their firm though; impressive as the cards may have been our actual product didn't appeal to them.
Style 6 seems to have a little bug handling the letter combination "ex" at higher legibility. Try the phrase "I had to collect things from my ex" to see what I mean. It goes delightfully crazy off the side of the page.