From: tcmay@sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 95 09:28:07 PDT
To: ab411@detroit.freenet.org
Subject: Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
Message-ID: <ac312fb403021004f23b@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



David Conrad told me he meant for this to go to the whole list, but only
sent it to me by mistake. So here is his post.


At 4:14 PM 7/18/95, David R. Conrad wrote:
>Tim May <tcmay@sensemedia.net> writes:
>>Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic work are interesting, to
>>the extent that letters need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's
>>possible to send in some handwriting samples and get back a font that
>>emulates the handwriting!
>
>I suppose the resulting font has only one form for each letter?  (Although
>I understand that when you send them a sample, you send several instances
>of each letter; a friend was showing me an add for this.)  The fact that
>each letter is the same every time would be a giveaway.  We need something
>like Metafont, or at least choose from a number of different shapes.
>
>>                                                 ... So, the combination of
>>handwriting fonts, automated rant generators (of varying rabidities), and
>>fax capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots of handwriting
>>samples, various other fonts, and a mix of styles in the letters will help.
>
>Another factor that would make it appear more authentic would be spelling
>and grammar errors.  The grammar errors could be built into the rant
>generators (an occasional dangling modifier, an incomplete sentence or two);
>spelling errors could be done by post-processing the output of the rantgens.
>It's important to take into account the different types of spellos that
>occur: commonly misspelled words (aquired, beleive); wrong homophone (their,
>they're, there; two, to, too); transposed letters (transpoesd); near-misses
>on qwerty keyboards (nesr-mosses); and words left out.
>
>--
>David R. Conrad, ab411@detroit.freenet.org, http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/
>Finger conrad@grfn.org for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page
>Key fingerprint =  33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5  D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50
>No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.