wxsjmu by zevum oedldcmc cdhdeu qz

April 21, 2024 9:45 PM

QWANJI is a fun, minimalist little webtoy for converting the patterns drawn on QWERTY-based swipe keyboards like Swype (RIP) and Gboard into visible glyphs reminiscent of handwritten kanji (hence the name). Experiment by typing text (using spaces to break up glyphs) to see instant results, and share by copying either the resulting URL or the gibberish text, which you can drop into the text field to see them sketched out. No word on when DVORAK support is coming (or T9, for that matter -- but there's a simulator for that).
posted by Rhaomi (8 comments total)

What I really need is something that puts TWO qwanjis next to each other, so I can make a probably futile attempt to troubleshoot why it feels like swiping keyboard accuracy has gotten worse over the last few years.
posted by chrominance at 10:26 PM on April 21 [4 favorites]

"yourmom"

d'awww...
posted by symbioid at 10:33 PM on April 21

>What I really need is something that puts TWO qwanjis

type them into this tool, separated by a space
posted by Phssthpok at 9:18 AM on April 22

Boy, you'd think I would've tried that before making a fool out of myself on Metafilter, huh. Thanks for the heads-up!

(I stand behind my comment about swiping keyboards getting worse though)
posted by chrominance at 10:27 AM on April 22 [1 favorite]

Huh. I’m pretty sure my swipe paths are very different than the ones it draws. I’m curious how it chose them. Example: if either my proprioception or the vanishing trails left on my iPhone keyboard can be trusted, I write “out” as a little trail like hanging bunting: peaks at the letters, arcs hanging below between them. The glyph this site generates is very different—and puts a loop in the first letter, “o”, where if I use loops it’s in the middle of a word… in this case, I do a wee loop on the “u” to make it clear to the software where in a largely horizontal motion (o, u, t are all in a line on the top row) I mean to be pausing.
posted by clauclauclaudia at 12:36 PM on April 22

Sigil and chaos magic people like Grant Morrison are gonna lose it over this.
posted by KrampusQuick at 1:36 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]

Back in the day when Swype was new, a friend and I competed to find words that you could type by swiping a rough picture of the thing. 'Plough' was the first we found, I don't remember the others.
posted by Hogshead at 7:54 AM on April 23

I have two almost value-free comments:
1) Nice title; it took me a second but it's very, very nice.
2) When we got to school too early to get into Kindergarten, my oldest used to "draw" on the Swype/Swiftkey/whatever keyboard, and see what words it came up with. It was very like KrampusQuick's sigil magic: What word does drawing a flower make? What word is a circle? a heart?
posted by adekllny at 7:57 AM on April 23