
Learn to read a binary font by reading a story - trogdoro
http://dotsies.org/stories/the-lamplighter.html
======
Cushman
This seems like it could actually be a real improvement on written Latin if it
adopted a real phonetic alphabet. Just transposing all of my existing
graphemes for new, smaller ones seems a little silly.

(And since what you're really asking is not for people to learn a new
alphabet, but to learn a new symbol for every word in their lexicon, it
wouldn't be that much more of a leap. Think about it.)

Thinking about it-- you increase your bandwidth immediately. You can knock out
/c/, /q/ and /x/ right off-- maybe a couple other consonants (/j/?) with
creative digraphs (/gi/?). Use the extra bits to add in the more confusing
vowels sounds, and appropriate current digraphs where they aren't confusing.

Chording becomes your standard input device; just press every sound that's in
the word at once and move on. Anyone would be able to type as fast as they
could talk, at least, and read far faster. Text to speech and vice versa would
be much easier. Machine translation would make you perfectly legible to the
non-phonetically-literate, and the vastly improved typing speed would more
than make up for any minor hiccups. It would be much, much easier to teach
English to children and non-natives, so much so that we'd stop using letters
for everyday writing. Alphabetic English would be bizarrely unintelligible
within a couple generations, but again, thanks to machine translation,
perfectly readable.

Of course you get all of this just from having a phonetic alphabet; a concise
binary representation is just icing on the cake. If your goal is to get people
to read different, why not go for the grand prize?

~~~
suby
I'm going to school right now to become a court reporter / stenographer.
Basically, I type on a funny looking keyboard
([http://www.acculaw.com/images/products/display/stenograph%20...](http://www.acculaw.com/images/products/display/stenograph%20diamante%20pink%20g.jpg))
where you're not so much typing letters as much as you're typing sounds. So
the word "talk", for example would be written "tauk", with each letter of the
word pressed at the same time (if possible. Some words you need to come back
for a second, third, or god forbid forth stroke).

You have to write at 225 words a minute in order to graduate, but some people
are able to write at speeds of 300+ words a minute. If you look at the
keyboard, the machine is separated into two halves. On the left half there are
only 9 keys, but each letter of the alphabet can be written with those 9 keys
because it's context sensitive. The letter "t" by itself would be the letter
t, but if it's next to a "k", it might become the letter d. You mentioned that
we can knock out certain letters such as c, and that's indeed what is done
with stenography. The word "car" is written "kar". There are sometimes
conflicts, like "sell" and "cell", so you still need a way to write a c, but
that's the gist of it.

Worth mentioning is that there are only 4 vowel keys on the machine (the
vowels are the keys that are on the bottom), but you can write a lot of
different sounds with these four keys. A, O, E, and U are the vowels that are
on there, and if you press one of those keys individually, you'd write a short
vowel of that key. If you wanted to write a short I, you'd press E and U
together. You would write long vowel sounds by combining different vowels
together. So for example, if you wanted to write a long e sound, you'd write
aoe, long U sound would be aou, long a sound would be ai (or aeu depending on
how you look at it), long o is oe, and long i is all the vowels together at
once.

It can be hard to read what you've written if you're not extremely good at it.
The word dime, for example, you would see as "TKAOEUPL". There are a few
different theories out there, and even if everyone learns the same theory,
everyone puts their own little spin on it, so if you wanted to read what
someone else wrote, it might be tough.

This is the layout of the keyboard if anyone is interested
([http://dmc122011.delmar.edu/ba/crtrgallery/images/steno_keyb...](http://dmc122011.delmar.edu/ba/crtrgallery/images/steno_keyboard_chart_jpg.jpg))

~~~
Groxx
As an outsider, I don't see why reading "TKAOEUPL" instead of "dime" would be
an improvement (except for checking precisely what you wrote) for even
professionals. Is there a reason why these machines don't convert the roughly-
phonetic words into English words? I would think it wouldn't even be too hard
to program, even with those 'little spin's, considering how far we've come
with grammar checkers and gestural keyboards like Swype.

~~~
javajosh
It's funny how when someone on HN says, "My method works well, but there are
some pathological cases, like X" someone else on HN will invariably reply
with, "Yeah, but I don't see why X would be an improvement."

This is a bad practice not only because it misrepresents the original thought
(the person was not claiming that X was an improvement, they clearly called it
pathological), but more perniciously it subtly erodes the (altogether sensible
and honorable) habit of good people to give full disclosure of their ideas and
methods. To put it simply: attacking someone on the weaknesses that they
themselves have revealed about their own process or idea is neither fair nor
useful, and does not contribute to the discussion.

~~~
Groxx
If it came across that way, I'm sorry - I'm genuinely curious why such
machines don't convert what was typed into English. In the past it was almost
certainly a lack of computational power (or zero) - what about now? I was only
asking about the reading portion, the writing is pretty clearly faster.

I'm not in any claiming that they should be typing on QWERTY. I'm wondering
why the pathological case exists _at all_ when it seems it doesn't have to,
and if there's a reason for it that I'm not aware of. Maybe there's a market
for machines like this to spit out English, maybe there isn't, but I'm not in
the field so I really don't know.

~~~
suby
Ah, I'm sorry, I actually gave the wrong impression. On the machine I own, you
can choose whether or not to have it display English, or what you've actually
written, or a split screen with English on one side and what you've actually
written on the other.

Reading it in English isn't as ideal as you may think, though. I actually
prefer reading the notes. The problem is that if you're writing at 225 words a
minute, it can be very easy to accidentally leave off a letter, or add an
extra letter to a stroke. The English might come up as come up as a completely
different word, where as if you're reading what you've actually written, it
can be a lot easier to see your mistake and read the correct word.

For example, let's use the word Dime again. If I'm going at 225 and I
accidentally add an "R" to the word dime, it'll look like "DRAOEUPL". In
English, this would read "Did there come a time", where as if I were looking
at my notes, it would be obvious to me that I intended for that to be "dime".
If you're reading back at court, you don't want to make mistakes like that.

~~~
Groxx
Makes sense, and yeah, that kind of error is something that grammar checkers
still fail miserably at. Thanks!

It's good to know that it has at least been done. There are so many places
where technology lies untapped, I was half-expecting this to be one of them
since it's such an old field (and with close ties to the government).

~~~
suby
I'm half expecting them to replace this field entirely with speech to text
technology in 50 years or so.

~~~
bfrs
50 years or so? Kurzweil would have another heart attack if he read this ;)

------
david_ar
I really like this approach (even if I'm still not entirely convinced about
the benefits of dotsies).

For a while, I've had this idea of a book that starts in standard English, and
gradually alters the grammar and introduces new words - so that halfway-
through it's written in somewhat of a pidgin/creole language, and by the end
you're reading a completely different language (e.g. French or Japanese). I'm
not aware of such a thing existing, or even being feasible for that matter,
but I think it would be interesting.

~~~
jonp
I had a similar thought a while back when reading "A Clockwork Orange". On
page one the slang ("droogs", "horrorshow", "moloko", ...) is rather jarring
and it's not entirely clear what it all means, but over time the meaning
becomes apparent.

~~~
trogdoro
Ah yes, it's fun to say those words while listening to a little of the old
Ludwig Van. Maybe even a little of the old in and - alright I'll stop there.

------
houshuang
Not sure if this is worth the effort, but brilliant approach to learning. I've
often had fun playing with inventing my own alphabets and stuff -- if you
could actually learn to read this font at a decent speed, it would be fun to
click a bookmarklet anytime you wanted some privacy :)

I love reading, and I read pretty fast - I've often thought that the existing
approach in most textbooks where they give you a short (5-10 line text) with
tons of new words and grammar, and then when you're done working through that,
give you a new one with a ton of new words, is non-ideal. Once I'm done
learning all the new words, you should give me five pages with text that only
uses the words I've already learnt, to "fix" it - and to give me a feeling of
mastery...

~~~
trogdoro
Very interesting thoughts!

> it would be fun to click a bookmarklet

You can grab a bookmarklet for this at dotsies.org (the blue button).

~~~
random_letters
Could you make this bookmarklet toggle between regular/dotsies?

~~~
trogdoro
That could probably be done. What's the use case? Maybe if you think of a good
plot for the <http://dotsies.org/game> I'll take a stab at it :)

~~~
technolem
how's this for an idea, inspired by this video
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxX_bVluflo> it would be an investigation into
a world that got turned into dots, or something. That way you could have lots
of dotsies font all around, and a bunch of text slowly turning into dotsies
for practice. You might also consider color coding the letters so that you
have an additional channel of hints that you can toggle on and off. To make
the reader have a more gradual slope.

------
exch
This reminds me of Elian Script[1]. It is not particularly optimized for
reading but it is extremely easy to learn and become proficient in.

The usual habit to develop ones own handwriting style when using this, makes
it something rather unique to each individual. This also improves writing
speed because you optimize the letters to suit your own writing style. We both
(friend and me) use it as a form of poor-man's-cryptography for diaries and
stuff we write in public (trains, buses, etc).

My friend's Elian compared to mine is almost unrecognisable at first glance.
But if you understand the few basic rules for the writing system, you can read
either of our versions very effectively in only a short amount of time. And
those rules are preposterously simple. You do not have to memorize different
shapes for each letter of the alphabet. That's a definite plus.

[1]: <http://www.ccelian.com/concepca.html>

------
karlshea
This seems like one of those things that will push something useful out of my
head if I learn it.

~~~
strags
Absolutely. I stopped reading a couple of pages in because I didn't want to
forget where I live.

------
Patryk
Why not stack Morse code horizontally? At least Morse code is somewhat
designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution of letters (e.g., e
is a single dot.)

~~~
tommi
It has been done: <http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/58144>

~~~
trogdoro
Interesting! Here's a similar version that's more horizontally condensed:

<http://dotsies.org/morse>

I get asked this a lot, so I threw this together just now.

------
trogdoro
Here's a shorter one. The first one is a bit long:

<http://dotsies.org/stories/the-runaway-couple.html>

If you have any preferences for any stories from gutenberg.org I can add those
too.

~~~
adrusi
are these programmatically generated? if so, would it be possible to get a
script to make one of these from say an article scraped by instapaper?

~~~
trogdoro
You can grab the bookmarklet at dotsies.org to use the font on any web page.
If you're referring to going gradually from letters to dots then yes, happy to
post the script.

------
btipling
I couldn't read anything past the title.

------
wxl
In my opinion, it would make more sense to read braille by looking at it.
However, it would be cool if this were some sort of alien language/hidden
language in a video game or something.

------
nosignal
I can see this being applied in labels etc. for computer vision. Some kind of
control/orientation character could make it similar to a QR code but actually
readable by humans.

Generally, though, if something's going to be read by both, you may as well
just have a label with plain English + a QR code. No reason why it has to be
readable by both.

------
cycojesus
Reminds me of Marain, the language and alphabet invented by Iain M. Banks for
the Culture: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture#Language>

There's even a least one font available:
[http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.fr/2010/09/free-font-
marain-...](http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.fr/2010/09/free-font-marain-
script.html)

------
teeray
I've always wondered what Conway's Game of Life was trying to tell me...

------
quink
So... if I want the single letter 'B' by itself, it looks exactly the same as
the letters A, C, D or E?

In other words, 'DE' look exactly the same, without any reference, as 'AB',
and there is a haphazard set of similar combinations?

I'm not doing that. Learn Braille instead.

~~~
devrim
think differently. right now our brain processes letter by letter, with
dotsies it will become symbol by symbol. i'm reading it for some time, haven't
had that difficulty.

there will always be letters next to it anyway, easy to see the base, if you
have to.

~~~
est
This looks exactly like Chinese.

Chinese people don't read line by line, they read paragraph by paragraph.
Chinese has the advantage of reading very fast, and in fewer length[1]. The
drawbacks however, are much larger character set (which results in higher
illiteracy), and slightly slower writing speed.

But English/Romantic languages are not best suited for symbolic reading,
because there are declensions. In Chinese, do-did-done are the same words.
Every meaning is concluded by the context.

[1]:
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-
chart-21)

~~~
masklinn
> This looks exactly like Chinese.

Looks more like a worse version of Hangul.

------
ricardobeat
What about diacritical marks? Without them it's restricted to English.

~~~
trogdoro
Here are some accents. I'm adding them to the font as people request them at
<https://twitter.com/dotsiesfont>

<http://dotsies.org/m/#%F8x+isf+%F4x+pt%F2q+xysjhh%E1>

~~~
jomohke
Missing 'ñ' and 'ü'. ¡quiero leer español!

------
tripzilch
Last time your project came up, I wanted to ask if you've done any research
into the various already existing shorthand writing systems ?

When I tried to find out more about those 10 years ago, a lot of sources were
old and hard to find, but with a bit of persistence I found some PDFs and
websites on a system called "Gregg Shorthand". Fortunately today it's right
there on Wikipedia for you: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_shorthand>

~~~
trogdoro
Greg and Pitman both look interesting -
<http://omniglot.com/writing/shorthand.htm>

There's a potential to borrow some of the concepts while typing in dotsies,
utilizing some of the many possible modifier keys that having the alphabet on
both hands opens up (hold down c with one hand and typing h with the other
hand, etc.).

------
fr0sty
This reminds me a great deal of Mark Twain's plan for the improvement of
English Spelling:

<http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html>

~~~
Someone
Attributed to Mark Twain, but unlikely to be written by him:

<http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j31/satires.php>
<http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/spoofs.php>

------
ricardobeat
For non-native english speakers, the text on the home (<http://dotsies.org/>)
is a bit easier to grasp.

------
pirateking
I haven't put in the time to become fluent in reading Dotsies (Dotsie?) yet,
but find it fascinating. I can imagine a multitouch keyboard made for Dotsies,
that could be quite a bit more efficient once learned.

Has any research been done on optimizing graphemes and common words for
multitouch typing?

------
tennis
This seems flawed in that it arbitrarily translates regular symbols into what
looks like a graphic error soup. I feel like letter and di/tri-graph
frequencies should have been considered, as well as conventional expectations
(m looks thicker than i, f.i.).

------
davidw
The end of the story looks like 'space invaders', and I have the urge to shoot
the letters.

~~~
trogdoro
Omg, there should totally be a game like that to help people learn!

~~~
trogdoro
Ok, here's a start:

<http://dotsies.org/game/>

You can move it around with the arrow keys. It says "alien".

Now what should it do?

~~~
trogdoro
I added some characters. Someone give me a plot!

~~~
trogdoro
Ok, now the alien can eat the other characters, but I don't know why. Anyone
good at making up plots?

~~~
polymatter
Rather than alien, how about a hungry catapillar. And the hungry catapillar
can only eat the next word in the sequence. Ok now it sounds like hungry a
katamari. nom nom.

------
iM8t
And what about UTF-8 letters (for example ā, ž, š)? How can you make them by
using dotsies?

~~~
trogdoro
Just add the accents at the top -
<http://dotsies.org/m/#%F8x+isf+%F4x+pt%F2q+xysjhh%E1>

------
pepijndevos
I want to be able to read QR code by naked eye. Lets see how far I get.

------
olalonde
Interesting learning paradigm but on the "optimized for reading" side, we
already have the Chinese alphabet which is probably at least as dense as
dotsies.

------
devrim
genious.. my favorite part of the day is to come home and read some dotsies
since i discovered it..

------
drobilla
This is a very cool effort and method to teach a very silly font/language
idea.

------
Mizza
This is super sweet. I just did the whole thing, now I can read Dotsie!

------
channi
It is fuckin' cool, I really liked that.

------
myf
the density reminds me of chinese

~~~
dedward
No that it's necessary, but I can't see any comment anywhere here or on the
dotsies about numbers...

Also - diacriticials. This works fine in English, but pretty much every other
place that uses the latin alphabet needs to use some kind of extra marks -
even if we ignore the ones that are basically de-facto unused these days....
but in spanish the ´ is rather importnat to indicate emphasis and hence
meaning or past tense, the ¨ is used occasionally, and n and ñ are two
different letters, rather important if you want to be saying "happy new year"
instead of "happy new anus" (año = year)

perhaps an alternate version for different languages? Spanish should be easy
considering we only have to take into account ´ and ¨ as a diacritical - the
rest "ll" and 'ñ' are taught in school as separate and distinct letters in the
alphabet (as htey relate directly to pronunciation, no exceptions- ll is
always a y, ñ is always like "ny" - not sure about the ¨ - it's not used
often, and the difference is subtle - though possibly important - common in
people's names I think, where you'd want to get it right. - have to look it
up.

~~~
trogdoro
Numbers are unaltered. Optimizing them wouldn't save much space in normal
english text, since they're rare.

Hey, new anus is a perfectly respectable holiday.

Here are some examples of accents:
<http://dotsies.org/m/#%F8x+isf+%F4x+pt%F2q+xysjhh%E1>.

I'm adding more to the font as they're being requested.

------
wavephorm
For what purpose?

~~~
trogdoro
Mostly for space-efficiency. See <http://dotsies.org> for a better
description.

~~~
trothamel
Dotsies aren't all that space-efficient, though, when compared to regular old
text. For example, in this comparison:

<http://i.imgur.com/Ldd70.png>

I'd argue that the text on the right, in the green font, is just as readable
as the dotsies, while taking up less space.

~~~
trogdoro
That's probably largely because the circuits in your brain have become finely
honed on latin characters, after reading letters many millions of times for
many years.

It's difficult to know how that image would appear to someone who was equally
acclimated to both. At the moment no such person exists.

One clue might be how they compare to each other after you scoot your chair
back from your computer until both have become blurry. When you get far enough
away that you can't distinguish anything in the green paragraph, can you see
any distinguishing characteristics in the red one? You won't be able to make
them out, of course, but can you see that there are light and dark areas?

~~~
akavi
I've put about five hours in to this (The magnificent motivating power of
procrastinating on something-else-you-need-to-do), and already I feel like I
can identify individual dotsie words from a greater distance than I can the
Roman words.

So I suspect your thesis may not be entirely unfounded.

