Show HN: A custom font that displays Cistercian numerals using ligatures

Excellent, I’ll look back at it when I find time to progress on my own pet project of custom numeral notation.

Specification: each cipher from 0 to 9 is using n+1 stroke, using only horizontal, vertical or left-bottom to right-top orientations. They also have distinctive traits that let them be identified even with only the very top or very bottom part. So 0 looks like / for example.

I also went above base 10 and made enough glyph to cover a sexagesimal base. The constraints on the drawing are then looser, so to go up to 20 we had a single "\". Incidentally and funnily enough that makes the 10th glyph look like a X. Then to get up to 40 glyphs, we simply square the 20 previous ones. And the plan to reach the 60 glyphs is to have a circled variation.

I’m not versed in the art of font crafting, but I would love to find someone to work in common on that one.

Here is a draft with the first steps for those interested:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alternative_cipher_n...

Hexadecimal can be done with 4 bars, representing 4 bits, on the top right = one hexadecimal digit.

For four quadrants, we get 4 x 4 bits = 16 bits = 2 byte digit.

0-65,535 in one digit. A digit reduction by a factor of 4.

Just a byte could be represented by a half-height vertical line, with only left and right "quadrants". A lower case number!

And a 4 byte = 32 bit number could be represented with one digit, with vertical and horizontal main bars. I.e. 8 quadrants. One "digit", 0-4,294,967,295.

This is so neat. Thanks for putting it together. A strange number system, but interesting. It would be great if it could be done in Unicode. I'm intrigued to know what it was used for.

> Sometimes (not always), this makes addition visual

I guess this would always work with tally marks. Is there a more complex number system where visual feedback like this always works?

For a taste of this in Arabic numerals consider a 7 segment font, with 1 aligned to the left; we’d have “5+1=6”.

I've thought, in other contexts too, how much easier innovation in script (in writing, glyphs, etc.) is when handwriting instead of printing text. Anyone could create their own Cistercian shorthand - and Medieval writers did use all sorts of shorthand.

Print requires a pre-composed set of glyphs with exceptions that are, I suppose, expensive (i.e., custom made by the printer). Typing right now on your computer, how easily can you create a custom glyph and share it? Look what the OP must do - stretch the bounds of typeface function, something few people are equipped to do.

If HN comments were hand written, each commenter could create custom glyphs on the fly. We could also draw diagrams and pictures, musical notation, draw lines pointing to different taxt from others - gloss each others comments.

Thinking about it (and wandering onto a tangent): If computers could process handwriting the same way as text encodings, would that be preferrable? I can't type as fast as I write but partly because I type far more. I could do so much more with a pen; it would be interesting to try. How well do LLMs handle handwriting recognition?

The glyphs are really facinating; thank you. Has anyone proposed Unicode code points for them?

Are there more efficient representations of numbers - or anything else - in terms of bits per glyph? The Cistercian numarals encode a bit over 13 bits per glyph, of course. Maybe forms of Chinese - though I think most words require 2 characters - or another ideographic language? But also is there anything with Cistercian cognitive efficiency? You can learn it in minutes.

I wonder why the didn't make 3 into F. They follow two other patterns for 3 then 4 glyphs: 3,4,5 have hypotenuses and 6,7,9 have the short parallel line. Also, they use other glyphs that approximately match Latin letters - e.g. 9 (P), 100 (L), 900 (b), 9000 (d) - so that wouldn't deter them.

In a high trust environment, I suppose easy addition is helpful. Probably not best used in loan agreements.

scnr 9900

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