[HN Gopher] 800 Years of English Handwriting
___________________________________________________________________
800 Years of English Handwriting
Author : azeemba
Score : 166 points
Date : 2025-09-23 02:21 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (artsandculture.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (artsandculture.google.com)
| valleyer wrote:
| Slightly off-topic:
|
| 1. When I loaded the page, it bombarded me with a banner asking
| me, "Interested in sports?" (Yes, I am, but I came here to read
| about English handwriting. Go away.)
|
| 2. At the end, it presented me with a "badge" for finishing a
| whole "book"! Yeah, maybe people's attention spans would be
| better if they weren't bombarded with little banners at the
| beginning.
| eadmund wrote:
| And when I visited the page with JavaScript disabled, it
| displayed all the text but no images.
|
| HTML has the img tag. There's no need for JavaScript to add
| images to the DOM!
| cyberax wrote:
| Sorry. That was an oversight. Now the text is also generated
| by JavaScript manipulating the DOM tree.
|
| /S
| 0xEF wrote:
| I did not get either banner looking at the page using Firefox
| focus on mobile, but this parallax scrolling experience used on
| this site (and many others)that today's webdevs seem hot to
| trot over is abysmal. I'm on an 8" tablet and still have to
| find the sweet spot where the text does not obfuscate the
| image, so my eyes are unable to quickly dart between both as I
| read. It's absurd that people think this is a good way to
| present information. Another commenter replying to you
| mentioned why not just ditch the JS, and for a site like this I
| say, right, why not? I'd much rather have the static text and
| image positions afforded with simple and elegant HTML and CSS
| tags as opposed to this finicky BS that was clearly tested on
| maybe one viewport and called good.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| I'm torn on point 2... on the one hand, I'm insulted to be
| "rewarded" for my tenacity in managing to "read" what is
| basically a very short article with a lot of pictures. On the
| other hand, I'm working daily with people who refuse to read
| messages on Teams chat if they are longer than five words and
| respond either with an answer that proves they didn't make it
| past the first sentence or with the even worse "quick call?" So
| perhaps anything that rewards primary-school-level literacy
| among adults is a positive step after all.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Yeah I didn't think I needed to be called names ("bookworm")
| for reading a whole article on a topic I'm fascinated by. I
| get enough of that in real life already.
| coldpie wrote:
| We _really_ need to start considering these things in the same
| category as pop-up windows. Browsers need to start killing
| these things, just like they did pop-up windows in the 90s and
| early 2000s. Remember when pop-up blocking was a huge feature?
| Imagine if Firefox implemented that today to block all this
| crap.
| kelvinjps wrote:
| Apply Adguard - annoyances filter list on ublock
| teekert wrote:
| For me it's in Dutch, it must detect my language and adapt (since
| HN block non-English content)?
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Presumably they are doing that based on browser or OS language
| settings rather than IP-based location? As an English-speaker
| living in a German-speaking land nothing infuriates me more
| than websites that assume I would rather have German language
| content simply based on my IP address rather than checking my
| system language.
|
| But yes, to confirm your assumption - I followed the link above
| and got the English version.
| zarq wrote:
| There's a blue button at the bottom center to revert to the
| original language.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I always like throwing these old handwritten documents into LLMs
| to see how well they do. GPT5 did nicely on the quitclaim deed in
| Anglicana, which is very hard to read.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Browsing this led me to wonder if there is a font available for
| the Carolingian Minuscule style. Found "Dr. Pfeffer's Fonts",
| apparently free to download. Wasn't disappointed. I might try
| using one as a coding font for that real meditative "monastic
| scribe" kind of vibe...
|
| https://robert-pfeffer.net/schriftarten/englisch/index.html?...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| This is really beautiful content. I'm assuming it comes from the
| fact that there are Google teams tasked with digitizing old
| manuscripts?
|
| I work with a library ( _Biblioteca Philosophica Hermetica_ ) in
| Amsterdam that has thousands of manuscripts from the renaissance
| to the early modern period... all very esoteric. We really want
| to get the renaissance into model training! Over 75% of books
| (1450-1700) are unscanned -- and the manuscripts are in even
| worse shape.
|
| Curious if anyone knows if there any new handwriting recognition
| benchmarks? I've noticed the main model providers have plateaued
| in the past year on their ability to read manuscripts / modern
| handwriting... I think the lack of well-designed competitive
| benchmarks is the issue...
|
| I love positive examples of the intersection of AI and the
| humanities.
| gx wrote:
| It should've included another 100 years to catalogue and showcase
| the devolvement towards kindergarten handwriting.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Seeing the mention of Round Hand reminded me of Gilbert &
| Sullivan's description in _H.M.S. Pinafore_ of the importance of
| handwriting if, like Sir Joseph Porter K.C.B., you want to rise
| to the top of the tree: As office boy I made such
| a mark That they gave me the post of a junior clerk.
| I served the writs with a smile so bland, And I copied all
| the letters in a big round hand-- I copied all the
| letters in a hand so free, That now I am the Ruler of
| the Queen's Navee!
| casey2 wrote:
| The satire here is clear, that naval skill isn't necessary to
| run the navy but rather skill in some trivial and unrelated
| clerical task (along with political connections)
|
| The problem comes then when people see this, don't recognize it
| as corruption, and waste their time learning useless skills. In
| a large org productivity losses from this are non trivial.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I read a very serious article about how the path to promotion
| in today's US Armed Forces is skill in Powerpoint,
| ubiquitously used for daily reports up the chain.
| bluGill wrote:
| The us has been enough 'i can't believe it isn't a wars'
| lately that competence has some bearing, though powerpoint
| likely is valued too much.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| As a retired officer, this is at best tangentially true for
| warfighting roles. The more senior you get, the more you
| end up in staff and headquarters roles where plans and
| reporting become more of your role than direct operations.
|
| But to get there you have to compete and succeed in a
| stack-ranked promotion system where your tactical and
| operational skills are what set you apart.
| fatihkocnet wrote:
| Frist time seeing this website. Excellent!
| einpoklum wrote:
| > _The handwriting in the early 1100s is known as Carolingian
| Miniscule. It was easy to write, very legible and ideal for
| writing Latin._
|
| It was not very legible. Its legibility is weak due to aspects
| such as:
|
| * Non decomposability into rectangles bounding letters
|
| * Variation in letter forms depending on preceding and succeeding
| letters
|
| * "extended serifs" or edges of letters which may vary at the
| author's pleasure.
|
| * Some pen strokes being extremely thin to the point of near-
| invisibility (like the middle line of 'e' characters)
|
| * non-uniform vertical height of letters (even ignoring
| ascenders)
|
| * non-uniform horizontal baseline
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I interpret that sentence to mean "when compared to
| predecessors".
| navigate8310 wrote:
| What a horrible over engineered UI. Texts were illegible when
| behind a white background and constantly shifting image
| perspective. No proper way to zoom in on the image and anchoring
| everything on the scrollbar was the cherry on cake.
| nchmy wrote:
| yeah, its an absolute monstrosity of a site. Many of the images
| didnt even load for me.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Brave in iOS and yeah. Pinch to zoom better on images sucked,
| the auto zoom effect cut off the part it was trying to
| highlight on my smaller phone, and various other jumpy
| problems
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances--e.g.
| article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button
| breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
|
| bike shedding web design comment is always on my HN bingo card
| triyambakam wrote:
| In this case it very directly relates to the content's focus
| and is hardly tangential.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| It almost never is, and isn't in this case. It's just
| someone complaining about scrolljacking. Convo has been had
| thousands of times on HN alone. Just click the arrow at the
| bottom, problem solved.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Here is an old book written in Latin letters from 1526:
| https://runeberg.org/nt1526/0009.html
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-09-25 23:01 UTC)