30

I read this question, not what I want, I don't want lorem ipsum either

see this picture

enter image description here

A classic movie scene in cartoons and real movies, a letter appears to be written in a smooth elegant handwriting. However, the text itself is meaningless. Lots of curves. The reader immediately understands that it's unreadable so he skips to the end of the letter to read the readable part.

maybe something like

or this

enter image description here

Can such text be generated using latex? Many people try to read lorem ipsum, including me :) if i mix alphabet letters, the reader might not be able to spot the readable part immediately, and might ignore the whole article. I want to avoid using alphabet letters, and I want handwriting since it's smooth.

1
  • 2
    You could use a font from this package or one of the archaic scripts shown in the comprehensive list of LaTeX symbols, perhaps. Or hacm?
    – cfr
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:00

1 Answer 1

50

first hit for google squiggle fonts suggested http://www.fontspace.com/category/squiggle from where I picked up MumbleGrumble (free for personal use licence) then using xelatex:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{MumbleGrumble I BB}

\begin{document}

One two three four this is almost as bad as my real handwriting.
Red yellow green blue.


\end{document}
9
  • 2
    I didn't know that this kind of writing is called squiggle, not a native english speaker, otherwise i would have googled it too :) I'm a fluent speaker but there are always words that you just don't know, no matter how good you are :) a native speaker will always know more words :) thank you
    – Lynob
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:44
  • 1
    btw i'm a native arabic speaker and i don't know what squiggle is in arabic and i'm a francophone and i don't know it in french either :)
    – Lynob
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:46
  • 2
    @Fischer: Squiggle is "a short, irregular curve or twist, as in writing or drawing" according to dictionary.reference.com/browse/squiggle. Here's samples: google.com/search?q=squiggle&tbm=isch Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:49
  • thanks for letting me know, I remembered the word in arabic, for french, i had to use google translate :)
    – Lynob
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 21:51
  • 2
    @Fischer sorry I didn't mean to imply you should have found it yourself, but I wanted to highlight that it was a random google search result not not an actual font recommendation. Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 22:03

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .