How to differentiate glyphs by script (semi-)automatically?

Question

I am trying to emulate this poster which I've found at http://www.brill.com/about/brill-fonts. How could we define different color per script and get a similar glyph poster?

Answer 1

I am using HanaMinA.ttf for this task as a test case. After downloading and installing the font, I have prepared a TeX file mal-fonts.tex which can be processed by xelatex or lualatex.

% run: xelatex or lualatex mal-fonts.tex
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\pagestyle{empty}
\parindent=0pt
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{HanaMinA}
\begin{document}
\input{mal-result.tex}
\end{document}

I am generating mal-result.tex file by a standalone Lua script mal-fonts.lua. I've defined several regions (Latin, Extended Latin, Chinese, Japanese etc.) and its color. I am randomly selecting glyphs (function callme) making sure that two sequantial glyphs won't have the same color, or, I am testing a specific string (function testme).

We are running:

texlua mal-fonts.lua
lualatex mal-fonts.tex

We are getting this message at the terminal of a number of the processed glyphs:

Processed glyphs: 19 300

I am enclosing the Lua script and a preview of the PDF file with Latin+Japanese sentence and 300 randomly generated glyphs.

The algorithm for generating glyphs could be improved from regions to specific glyphs in a selected font. We are selecting glyphs without further testing, so a specific glyph could be displayed several times, in theory. The script is working fine if we are just testing strings.

Update: I've implemented that idea from the comment section. So the ligatures are preserved. Well, the example looks all the some but it is due to font and used words. The beginning of the generated file (mal-result.tex) looks like this:

\hfill{\color{green}Hello\ World!\ }\hfill{\color{gray}さようなら}\hfill{\color{green}\ }%
\hfill{\color{red}Ș}\hfill{\color{green}h}\hfill{\color{orange}Κ}\hfill{\color{violet}㌨}\hfill{\color{blue}ö}\hfill{\color{green}a}\hfill

This is the main Lua script (mal-fonts.lua):

-- I am mal-fonts.lua file...
-- I am checking (generated) string character by character and I use different color as defined in sets data table.
-- I am also saving time by randomly choosing glyphs. The glyph doesn't have to be defined in a specific font (that's a possible improvement, e.g. 198 (hex) in HanaMinA.ttf).

math.randomseed(0) -- to be changed
sets={
  {"green","61","7A"},
  {"blue","C0","FF"},
  {"red","100","2AF"},
  {"orange","388","3D1"},
  {"cyan","2460","24E9"},
  {"magenta","2800","28FF"},
  {"yellow","2F00","2FD5"},
  {"gray","3041","3096"},
  {"violet","3300","337F"},
  }

-- Generate a set of glyphs...
function callme(number)
local col=0
local s=""
local last=0
local marker=0

for i=1,number do
  col=col+1
  if col>#sets then 
    col=1 
    --whereto:write("%\n") -- to easy reading
    end -- of if col

if #sets==1 then
  realcol=col -- =1
else
  repeat
  realcol=math.random(1,#sets)
  until last~=realcol -- This is not effective computation, but it is an experiment.
  last=realcol
end -- if #sets...

  --realcol -- assures that two glyphs will have different color
  -- col -- colors are repated from 1..n
  startnum=tonumber(sets[realcol][1],16)
  endnum=tonumber(sets[realcol][2],16)    
  glyph=math.random( startnum,endnum  )

  --print(i,col,glyph,string.format("%X",glyph)) -- information about specific glyph
  s=s..unicode.utf8.char(glyph)
end -- of for i
--print(s)
testme(s)
end -- of function callme

-- Test a string and use a proper color as defined in sets.
function testme(mstring)
io.write(" "..unicode.utf8.len(mstring))
for i=1,unicode.utf8.len(mstring) do
  glyph=unicode.utf8.sub(mstring,i,i)
  value=unicode.utf8.byte(glyph)
  jkey=1 -- if glyph is not predefined
  for j=1,#sets do
    if value>=tonumber(sets[j][3],16) and value<=tonumber(sets[j][4],16) then jkey=j; break end
  end -- of j
  if glyph==" " then glyph="\\ " end -- \\; making sure that space will be there

  if jkey~=marker then 
    if i>1 then whereto:write("}") end
    whereto:write("\\hfill{\\color{"..sets[jkey][5].."}") 
  end -- end of if jkey
  whereto:write(glyph)
  marker=jkey
  --print(i,glyph)
end -- of for i
whereto:write("}") -- closing group with \color
whereto:write("%\n")
end -- of function testme

whereto=io.open("mal-result.tex","w")
io.write("Processed glyphs:")

-- Let's run several tests...
testme("Hello World! さようなら ")
callme(300) -- it calls for testme automatically

-- Close a file and end the script
io.write("\n")
whereto:close()