Boustrophedon reader.

November 27, 2001 3:38 PM

Boustrophedon reader. Be the first in your IP block. Forget about text-reversing widgets.
You'll need to get your hands on a reversed font. I only know of one, Helvetica Flip. If anybody finds another, nicer one, please let me know. [Link via SweetCode]
posted by Su (6 comments total)

As the ox plows.
posted by Mapes at 3:50 PM on November 27, 2001

Still wrestling with it, Su, but sure I'm onto something good. Thanks! Meanwhile, good to know that [a] couple of teachers expressed interest in converting boust into a cross-platform word processor. Means there's still hope, right?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:55 PM on November 27, 2001

My eyes hurt.

A port to Java might be interesting. If I remember rightly, the Java 2D interface provides some support for formatting bi-directional text and doing transforms on arbitrary fonts (ie flipping).
posted by dlewis at 4:08 PM on November 27, 2001

Once again, I mourn the smeg.com backwards script. This is what it did to the Sacramento Bee.
posted by rodii at 4:17 PM on November 27, 2001

teach me to not research before i post... Leonardo DaVinci wrote his notes so they could only be read in a mirror, while i used to be able to hand write it correctly even the links i've seen do not have the correct type to produce his effect but i can't get to Su's...

but then with i'm not done researching...

Note to Administrator: Please "hope me" with this image, I know my server cannot handle it!!!
posted by tilt at 5:35 PM on November 27, 2001

You need a reversed font? Thats just sloppy programming. You could render the offscreen and draw it as a reversed bitmap. I think I might write a java port tonight for the hell of it. I should be studying, though...
posted by delmoi at 6:36 PM on November 27, 2001