Show HN: 433 – How to make a font that says nothing

jasonjmcghee

Long time fan of your art and writing.

Is the idea here with Coffeeshop mode that typos can be dealt with later?

rpastuszak

Thanks! And yes, although the same idea applies to Ensō in general.

Looking at the feedback from people, I see two camps: those who rely on autocomplete and those who abhor it.

I normally use it in two ways:

- quickly turn it on/off when someone is passing by, so I can carry on writing undistracted

- keep it on for several minutes at a time, esp. when writing in a busy public place

yorwba

It seems like the gimmick of Ensō is that it's write-only and doesn't allow you to edit anything, so not being able to see your typos might be for the best actually.

rpastuszak

Spellcheck and autocorrect are disabled when Coffeeshop Mode is on.

(although, IIRC, you can override that)

Another reason: autocorrect/autocomplete can trigger visible previews/highlights on the screen.

(thinking about this out loud here: what about IME/pinyin? That works well in both modes, it's necessary)

efskap

Very cool, like <input type="password"> except with whitespace so you retain a vague sense of the wordshapes :) I could honestly see myself using this in a coffeeshop for the compromise between privacy and feedback.

rpastuszak

Thanks! I use it all the time. Someone on lobste.rs mentioned Redacted Script (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script) and I'm considering building something similar, even if just for fun, but for the entire first unicode plane, since otherwise the characters wouldn't get masked.

landgenoot

Reminds me of dotsies [1]. However the goal of dotsies to keep it still readable and use less space.

What are the odds someone in a coffee shop is able to read dotsies as well?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18703805

bouyaveman6

Thanks for the sharing, installed and ready to try for my next coffeeshop session

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