Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 July 15

= July 15 =

Changing the font on my Twitter name
I would like to change the font on my Twitter name. There are various websites (some of them are listed here) which allow you to do this, but as far as I can tell they are basically Unicode text converters, i.e. you type your name into a text box, it generates the name in various fonts, you choose one you like the look of and paste that into your Twitter bio. But what I want to be able to do is render my name using a font of my choosing and paste that into my Twitter bio. Can anyone tell me if this is possible? Many thanks, --Viennese Waltz 10:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If Twitter allows html-style markup, you can use
 * YourHandle.
 * For example,
 * Wiener Kaffee
 * should (if allowed) result in
 * Wiener Kaffee.
 * You can at the same time change the font-size and color:
 * Wiener Kaffee: Wiener Kaffee.
 * Note that the availability and sometimes appearance of typefaces is platform-dependent; not all viewers may see the same. Jokerman is one of the Microsoft typefaces, but for me it gets substed by Georgia. --Lambiam 23:10, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help, looks like html mark-up is not allowed in the name field though. Plus, there's a 50-character maximum limit. But thanks for trying. --Viennese Waltz 10:30, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Websites like FancyTextGenerator don't actually "change the font" of text. Rather they replace Latin letters (A, B, C...) with different Unicode characters (often mathematical symbols) that represent the same letter (e.g. 𝓐, 𝓑, 𝓒...). So unless you can change the HTML code of Twitter, you won't be able to use arbitrary fonts for your Twitter username.
 * For instance, I can type in "Wikipedia is cool" and it will give me "𝕎𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕡𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 𝕚𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕠𝕝". That text is using the same font as the surrounding text, just different characters. The 'W' (Latin Capital Letter W) is replaced with 𝕎 (Mathematical Double-Struck Capital W).
 * One consequence of this is that it totally and completely ruins accessibility for screen readers, and people who interact with the web in other non-visual ways. Rather than reading out the text as normal, a text-to-speech agent will rattle off the name of every character in order. (i.e. "mathematical double-struck capital W, mathematical double-struck capital i..."). The text becomes meaningless. As a result, using these "fonts" in non-trivial places on the web is something of a bad idea. RoxySaunders (talk · contribs) 16:05, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Here is an example of a Twitter name where the user has obviously done something to create the non-standard font. I would just like to know how this was done. I could tweet them, I suppose. As for the screen reader thing, sorry but I'm not bothered about that. I see no reason why visual creativity should be restricted for the benefit of those using screen readers. --Viennese Waltz 07:48, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * As RoxySaunders mentioned this is nothing to do with a non-standard font. The user is just using weird characters. That's why when you copy the name "𝖿𝖺𝗋𝗆е𝗋𝗌 𝖬А𝖭ᑌ𝖠ᒪ" you will get something similar although the precise display will depend on the display font which in the case of Twitter tends to depend in Twitter. There must be thousands of sites able to automatically convert regular English alphabet text into text using weird unicode characters if you can't be bothered finding the characters yourself. If the precise characters someone uses happen to exactly match those given by some popular site, you can perhaps guess that they may have used that specific site but it also depends whether each popular site would generate some different set of characters for that particular text and even if they do, it's ultimately just a guess they are using said popular site, they could have used some less popular site or even just followed some text that was generated by that site or many other combinations in between. In other words, if you want to know precisely how someone came up with their specific set of characters, asking them is indeed the only way, and even then you have to assume they are telling the truth. As for your other comment, provided you keep your disgusting lack of concern for those who do not have your level of vision out of Wikipedia, so be it. If you let it flow through to your edits here and violate WP:accessibility, I will come back from my Wikibreak to advocate for a community site ban of you. Note that it's quite likely searches for you funny character user name will often fail if people are using regular characters. I'll resist the urge to comment further on that point per WP:NPA Nil Einne (talk) 13:24, 18 July 2021 (UTC)
 * As noted above, there are lots of websites which can generate “fancy text” like this. I provided a link to one in my previous comment.
 * Your casual disregard for less-sighted users of the web is disheartening, but not uncommon. I can only hope you bring a different attitude to your more serious pursuits, should you ever publish any web content intended to be consumed by a large audience. Several companies have faced hefty lawsuits for running websites or applications which are not compliant with the ADA of 1990.
 * Because your new display name will be (on a technical level) untype-able, unreadable, unsearchable gibberish, I’d recommend trying to make it match your @handle. So if you chose to have something like ᐯIEᑎᑎEᔕE ᗯᗩᒪTᘔ as your display name, people could still search for you if your handle was @viennese_waltz.
 * All the best, RoxySaunders (talk · contribs) 04:48, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * that could be easily fixed if those text-to-speach programs used Unicode normalization. If you take a look at this tool you can see how it changes 𝕎𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕡𝕖𝕕𝕚𝕒 𝕚𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕠𝕝 to Wikipedia is cool. 93.87.13.65 (talk) 14:05, 19 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That tool leaves ᐯIEᑎᑎEᔕE ᗯᗩᒪTᘔ unchanged. Also, there may be legitimate reasons why a text uses "ℝ" and not "R", and then you do not want the distinction to get lost. --Lambiam 23:33, 19 July 2021 (UTC)