Glyphs

What is a glyph?
Why do I need to use glyphs?
Is the glyph smaller than the original?
Why would I want to use this?
What do they look like?
Can I make my own glyph?

I'm still playing with these so no big news yet. Just a fun still project I play around with from time to time. Please feel free to mail me feedback.


What is a glyph?

A glyph is an encoding scheme to transcribing data onto a physical medium such as a page of paper. Bits of data are encoded by small line segments. Later, a glyph decoder can take a scanned in glyph and decode its contents.

What do I need to use glyphs?

With only a 300 dpi printer and 300 dpi scanner a the glyph software, one can easily encode and decode glyphs.

Is the glyph smaller than the original?

One page of text compresses down to a 5 by 5 cm square area. You may be able to do better than this based on the quality of the printer and/or scanner.

Why would I want to use this?

Certainly as we move to a more electronic age we would prefer to send pointers to relevent data. However, there still may be a use for glyphs. For example, you could hand a person without any net connection your resume on the back of your business card. Printed documents could be encrypted and be secure to pass around.

What do the look like?

The image at the top of this page is a portion of a glyph as well as the example below. The glyph below is of a typical page of text. The printed glyph is about 5 cm on a side.



Eric Paulos / paulos@cs.berkeley.edu / 16 Feb 1995