Alternative Layout System
I think "Last Is First" is almost like a checksum for the people writing the text, so they don't lose their place as they are copying it.
I remember having to read the Torah and it was hard to move from learning to read with standard printed Hebrew, into not only the voweless text, but with the letters stretched. You had to learn how to sing the words correctly as well.
But it was a beautiful thing to see, handwritten, fully justified, columns written with ink on parchment.
Every once in a while I come across something so beautifully stupid that all I can see is the genius behind it, and it fills me with joy. Well done!
In non-phoenitic languages, i.e. English, many of these methods are painful, especially "Last is First". See "I", but then it's "In", so you need to mentally backtrack some understanding. See "t", but then it's "that", so if you're subvocalizing to read, you need to reform the phoneme because 't' is a different phoneme from 'th'.
Ok, I want the "Hyphenator" layout, but with more than just one word. I want the extra text to wrap around while the font keeps getting smaller to mimic how I used to take hand notes in college and need to shove in some stuff with no space left in the line.
"Last is first" very much reminds me of the custos/custodes seen often in Gregorian chant notation, which come at the end of a line and are a hint of the first note in the next line (so while your eye is finding the start of the next line, you already know the pitch, even though it typically does not include the syllable).
See e.g. https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.18/Documentation/notation/ancien...
I have some eye issues, namely a lazy eye and double vision. I find same-sizer remarkably easy to read. Easier than standard text, which is very curious.
I almost wonder if the idea could be used as a sort of accessibility mode.
I want to like this, but the page keeps reloading itself every few seconds. It’s really annoying.
This is horrendous. I love it.
Their "imager" tool is really cool, though:
God, please don't make websites like this. I have a 1 Gbps connection, with a 1 Gbps network interface. Your server _cannot_ serve a site this large. Every single jpeg image which by design takes up no more than a few hundred pixels on a side when rendered on a screen is transferred over in 4K resolution, at sizes up to 9 MiB. Certain pages take upwards of 15 seconds to load with a total size of >40 MiB!!! I'm aware that it's partially due to the hug of death, but 3 Mbps is actually a respectable serving speed for most small servers, the site itself is just too large!
fun read. a few years ago i got pretty obsessed with boustrophedon script, which feels to me in a similar category. still feels like such an elegant solution to 'oh these lines are getting too long'. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
so cool!
in devnagri script text is aligned at the top of the line instead of the bottom of the line. e.g. https://www.typotheque.com/research/devanagari-the-makings-o.... would be cool to see a version where roman scripts are top-aligned, bottom uneven instead of the other way round
"Same Sizer" is exactly how I feel about justified text
I'd like to see a layout system that maximizes rivers in the text. Lets make reading weird.
Author made frequent reference to Hebrew text, is there a particular reason historical Hebrew texts uses these methods?
I make it more readable I want to squash the words further so the english becomes more logographic by:
A) using an alphabetic shorthand ike superwrite: https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/comments/pttlnn/superwrit...
B) squeeze the individual letters together in a font, extreme negative tracking while they're still distinguishable.
C) substitute frequent short words with symbols and prefix them to the next word, e.g.: - 'not' with symbol: "!" - 'and' with symbol: "&' - 'or' with symbol: "|" - 'the' with symbol: "`" - 'a' with symbol: "*" - 'at' with symbol: "@" - 'about/around/circa' with symbol "~" - 'of' with symbol '\' - 'for/per' with symbol '%' - 'in' with symbol '#' - 'to' with symbol '>' - 'from' with symbol '<' - 'on' with symbol '^' - 'as' with symbol '-' - 'is' with symbol '=' - 'with' with symbols 'w/' & 'w/o' (without) ...
these layouts break kerning rules. render engines expect horizontal flow, steady spacing. but with same sizer or echoed lines, glyph logic goes off path. spacing's no longer font native, it's forced by layout. font stops being just visual, becomes part of layout logic. whole engine ends up doing things it wasn't ment for. then layout will start mutates typography logic iteslf
This applied to a fictionally motivated glyphs, like Klingon, would be interesting.
Of course it's Swiss.
immediately ordered the book
fascinating checkout flow
These are so creative!
I love "Same Sizer" for titles and design, and I don't think I'd hate "Fill the Space" in body text if glyphs (such as the key) were used.
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Thanks, I hate it. /s
Reminds me of the Dotsies system for fast reading, only this makes reading slow...
I think "Same Sizer" looks ugly because characters are stretched mechanically, so each line has different width. Ideally, the lines should all keep their widths, and the position should be stretched.
I think a better application of "all words have the same size" principle can be seen in Vietnamese calligraphy, which sometimes combines Latin characters with Chinese-adjacent writing style, e.g. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C4%90%E1%BB%91i_-... (this is written in Latin script split into equal squares)