I learned last year that "translation" can be a very tricky thing. Because there's never a one-to-one correlation between one language's words, phrases, structures and metaphors, and another language's equivalent stuff. And LLM translations may not be the actual translation you want, or need.
I wrote up my experiences of translating Lorca and Cavafy poems here[1]. tl;dr: I have developed a massive new respect for translators; however much they're being paid, they probably need to be paid more!
I give my side projects away for free because I have a $job to pay for the roof over my head, food, etc. and don't feel the need to make more money from my hobby work.
I create my side projects in the first place because I like to prove to myself that it is possible to do mad stuff in the browser - like a screen recorder with canvas composition, teleprompter, live annotations and talking-head overlay[1]. Or an SVG-inspired image filter builder for local batch application to images (still a WIP but almost there)[2].
It doesn't cost me any money to host the results, so: why not?
It's not "easier" using Javascript; raw Javascript websites are a nightmare to build, maintain and reason about. It is "easier" with Javascript + current-favourite-framework-of-the-day.
Also: accessibility, SEO, the all-new Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) thing, etc.
Last year I made the mistake of asking ChatGPT what the world would look like if `∞ === -∞` and it took me seriously (I think) and led me on an hours-long dance where in the end it had me trying to prove, mathematically, that `2 > 1` ... and it was at that point I realised that I'm not cut out to think in numbers and maybe it was for the best that I failed my end-of-school Maths exam
No idea if anyone will be interested in using such a (free, MIT) web tool, but I'm having lots of fun putting my canvas library's filter engine (which is inspired by SVG chainable filters) through its paces.
> I spent a fair amount of time with p5 etc, but the results always felt limited and brittle.
I wrote a JS canvas library[1] partly because existing libraries of the time (2013) didn't do what I wanted a canvas library to do. Things like animated gradients and patterns, etc. I'm still working on the library today - so thats 12+ years of my spare time gone!
Generative art - such as challenges like Genuary[2] - is a key tool for giving me ideas on how to develop the library further. I keep CodePens of some of my better efforts[3] around as a set of extra tests to check for breaking changes as I fiddle with the library.
Agreed! Text layout engines are stupidly hard. You start out thinking "It's a hard task, but I can do it" and then 3 months later you find yourself in a corner screaming "Why, Chinese? Why do you need to rotate your punctuation differently when you render in columns??"
> the wheel template can have some letter parts like the top of L or d extend beyond the wheel
Yeah - I use the template (in that case, a circle) to calculate line lengths, then I run 2d text along the 1d lines. Even if I tried to keep all of the glyphs inside the wheel I'd fail - because some fonts lie about how tall they are. Fonts are, basically, criminals.
I wrote up my experiences of translating Lorca and Cavafy poems here[1]. tl;dr: I have developed a massive new respect for translators; however much they're being paid, they probably need to be paid more!
[1] - https://rikverse2020.rikweb.org.uk/blog/adventures-in-poetry...
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