alt.hn

7/31/2026 at 6:37:42 AM

Show HN: A Handwritten Blogging Platform

 https://handwritten.blog/

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 11:38:58 AM

Brings to mind Jeff Bridges’ homepage: https://www.jeffbridges.com/

by flobosg

8/3/2026 at 5:05:51 PM

Thanks for sharing this, instant add to my "unique artists" bookmarks folder.

by twalichiewicz

8/3/2026 at 11:48:08 AM

Beautiful.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:03:14 AM

I love that the comments on some of the posts (like this one) are written by hand too!

https://handwritten.danieljanus.pl/2022-10-01-hyperlinks-in-...

by jonas21

8/3/2026 at 9:50:07 PM

Following the handwritten comments brought me there, which I found to be HN-worthy: https://mzucker.github.io/2016/09/20/noteshrink.html

Also, as a sign of our times, it hyperlinks to what might have been a Microsoft tech page/knowledge base in the past, now completely replaced by poor taste LLM advertising slop. Good work, Microsoft.

by ezst

8/3/2026 at 5:04:36 AM

This is actually not on handwritten.blog, but on the site of the person where I got the original idea from! Maybe I can incorporate something like this on handwritten.blog too (e.g. a way for people to send in comments via email).

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 7:03:18 AM

https://tuhat.net has comments via email, but only when responding to a newsletter post. Then the replies are put in the authors letter inbox connected to the post. Though all comments are private to the original author.

by 8by3

8/3/2026 at 7:09:22 AM

Thanks for sharing.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 1:48:43 PM

Stop replying to every single comment here!

by Tomte

8/3/2026 at 1:54:38 PM

No!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 11:17:08 AM

I feel people who like this type of blogs and want to try something like a static website would love Styluslabs’ Write https://www.styluslabs.com/

Handwriting is better as SVG if you are writing digitally, and while everyone has their own vector ink based proprietary formats, I like the simplicity and openness of SVG’s!

by analog_daddy

8/3/2026 at 4:20:25 PM

SVG is completely unsuitable for recording pen stroke data, and fairly unsuitable as a publishing format for handwriting. It’s capable of representing a technical pen/fineliner with opaque, constant-width stroke tolerably well, but nothing else. For all other pen styles, you need variable stroke width (for which you have to switch to using a filled instead of stroked path, bloating it hugely and making it essentially uneditable), and also want some degree of variable opacity and/or texturing of the stroke (both impossible in SVG).

by chrismorgan

8/3/2026 at 11:29:03 AM

Very intresting, thank you for sharing!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:39:40 AM

Ironically, "No feeds. No algorithms. No likes." reads like copy that is, well, not handwritten.

by rgovostes

8/3/2026 at 4:57:03 AM

I can assure you it was written by my own hand (but appreciate it might sound like marketing - perhaps I can change it a bit so it sounds more natural :)

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 8:14:32 AM

I think the implication was that an LLM generated the text (which isn't an issue for me even if it was.)

That all being said, I love this project and I love how you're exploring linking in other mediums. I tried to do other linking demos via https://aifoc.us/hypermedia/ - it's something we don't do anywhere near enough

by kinlan

8/3/2026 at 8:28:04 AM

Fair enough, I might have gotton some help from an LLM with the copy!

Thank you!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 2:28:20 PM

Ironic.

by satvikpendem

8/3/2026 at 2:33:20 PM

Marketing is not my strong suit, so I use all the help I can get.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 12:54:05 PM

Very cool. I created a similar project back in late 2002 (2003?) using Anoto digital pen and paper for publishing to a blog format. That version was using a bluetooth connection to some Nokia or Ericsson handset that had gprs for communication with Anoto servers to route handwriting traffic. I went only so far as having an internal demo, though. A lot have transpired with the Anoto platform since then, also.

by rschoultz

8/3/2026 at 1:33:45 PM

Sounds amazing! Thanks!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:54:22 AM

How about a blog that contains its entire source code inline in the blog itself? [0]

[0] - https://mjwg6zy.blog/

Such that copy pasting its contents reconstructs the blog byte for byte

by purple-leafy

8/3/2026 at 5:01:52 AM

This is cool - I love quines!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:00:30 AM

Fantastic idea! I think the hardest part for people to adopt this will be overcoming atrophied handwriting skills and no autocorrect.

One thing that doesn't seem clear to me from reading without signing up is how do you actually upload content? Do you have to have paper and pen and then take a picture of it, or do you provide some kind of excalidraw-like canvas for writing? I notice there isn't any paper background or line rules, which I think would also be nice for those who fancy a bit of structure when reading/writing.

by slicendice

8/3/2026 at 5:05:55 AM

Thanks! This is good feedback.

Yes, you can upload a photo through the backend, or just email it to a publish email address.

Good idea about the line rules and paper background - this could land as "theming" in the future.

by emilesilvis

7/31/2026 at 7:09:53 AM

Reminds me of tinyprojects.dev Paper Website project from 2021

https://paperwebsite.com/

by arlattimore

8/3/2026 at 2:26:07 PM

huh that website looks like it was generated with Claude just yesterday or something

by MitPitt

8/3/2026 at 2:39:38 PM

I mean, LLMs are just imitating prior work, no? Poor designer probably feels like the people who liked using em dashes.

by bpev

8/3/2026 at 4:18:44 AM

I was very disappointed, when that happened, that the paper aspect of it was purely at authoring time; that it was converted into text. This one gets it right, preserving the handwriting aspect.

by chrismorgan

7/31/2026 at 7:14:45 AM

Interesting, thanks for sharing.

by emilesilvis

7/31/2026 at 10:04:50 PM

Similar but for typists, https://onetypedpage.com/

by brudgers

8/3/2026 at 4:58:34 AM

Interesting, thank you for sharing!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 11:08:53 AM

I've been thinking about getting a Remarkable... Really tough to choose between the Pro, the Pro Move, and the Pure.

I would quite like colour (for doodling), and the price point of the Move is slightly better, but I'm worried about the (small) size of it. Ideally I'd want something with colour support at an A5 paper size level. Wondering if anyone can speak to their experiences with any of them?

by sarreph

8/3/2026 at 11:27:51 AM

I use my ReMarkable Paper Pro every day :) I use it personally to do maths and journal, and professionally to take notes. What's your budget?

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 12:02:08 PM

Great to hear, thank you for sharing! Am considering getting one, but holding out until September because they haven't refreshed that particular device in a couple of years...

I wasn't intending on a budget as large as the Paper Pro's, but I could stretch to that if it made me demonstrably more productive / happier.

I was keener on the price point of the Paper Pure, but like the idea of a backlight and colour!

by sarreph

8/3/2026 at 11:10:26 AM

Interesting idea. I got myself an eInk tablet last week and was thinking about how I could incorporate handwritten notes/blog posts into my regular blog. As a separate section and maybe a separate RSS feed.

Because I actually liked the idea of enabling people to read my handwritten notes. I just would not want to put that onto an external service, being more of a selfhost person...

by sdoering

8/3/2026 at 11:28:27 AM

Thanks! Undertandable :)

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 8:57:52 AM

I love the idea from a personal note collection perspective, however as a blog I feel that it can be taxing to be able to read so many different handwriting styles

by sandeepkd

8/3/2026 at 9:20:02 AM

Different handwriting styles is just ... personal. Literally a letter. Even HAM radio operators or Morse code users have unique style. Could be ideal for small blog communities, but it falls apart when targeting large audience.

I need 250% size increase to be able to read this, and floating text makes it a super hard read for me.

OP, please use lined template for writing :)

by szszrk

8/3/2026 at 9:34:01 AM

Good idea `:)

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 1:04:28 PM

Nice idea! And I see that there's also automated transcript for SEO & accessibility. Is there some standardised way to upload the content, or any image goes?

by jensabacik

8/3/2026 at 1:34:05 PM

At the moment, any image goes.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 7:23:13 AM

This is really lovely! I saw a couple weeks back where someone made a custom app on their remarkable with an LLM responding to handwritten text

Makes me think that I should get my remarkable modded as well to post things I write to my website directly, incorporating some ideas from this. Thank you for sharing!

by ogundipeore

8/3/2026 at 7:28:37 AM

Thank you!

by emilesilvis

7/31/2026 at 6:48:40 AM

Hi Emile

I like the concept too. People are losing the ability to read handwritten letters and notes. I'm just curious, how does this all work? Can I simply take a photo of a page?

by cmbza

7/31/2026 at 6:59:42 AM

Hi cmbza - yes, you take a photo, which you can then upload through the site or email to a publish address.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 3:59:02 AM

Very cool, maybe add a more prominent header link to https://handwritten.blog/how-it-works. I had to read the comments here to find it

by suls

8/3/2026 at 5:35:45 AM

Good idea!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:03:25 AM

Might be missing something but I expected a way to browse the blogs - maybe even a 'random blog' link!

by 2349pm

8/3/2026 at 4:57:50 AM

I have a "discovery feed" on the backlog, but people would need to opt in for their blogs to appear there in any case.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 2:44:50 PM

It is a great idea, congratulations! Not sure if we will remember how to write ;-)

by h2aichat

8/3/2026 at 9:48:50 AM

Hi, I've been working on handwritten blogging too! It would be great to compare notes. I might also drop you a line on another platform.

by speerer

8/3/2026 at 10:03:44 AM

Let's do it!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:39:54 AM

Is this moderated in some way? It is the internet. Hard to see how this doesn't fill with doodles of penises and other similar things or worse.

by tekchip

8/3/2026 at 5:40:30 AM

It's not moderated. You own your content (including doodles of penises and other similar things).

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 3:13:08 PM

Without any way to access the corresponding text, this is unfortunately an idea I hope never gets any significant adoption.

I wonder if there is a way to make the underlying text accessible. OCR could presumably attempt to get at which letters correspond to which glyphs. Can a drawing be annotated in SVG as representing some character, as in an illustrated manuscript? If so, maybe this can be saved.

by tempfile

8/3/2026 at 5:15:17 AM

this seems to be great for like a single page exhibition or something, but reading long form content from something like this, personally I feel this to be not so intuitive

by wei_b0

8/3/2026 at 5:18:45 AM

I think I agree. I think it's more for the writer than for the reader.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:19:18 AM

i really like this. my issue is usually i read while selecting so my eyes follow which unfortunately the website won't support

by krehwell

8/3/2026 at 5:02:35 AM

Yeah I can imagine that's tricky to do in this case. Maybe I can think of something.

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:19:13 AM

cool idea, but doesn't this prevent translation for foreign audiences? or even screen reader integration

by arkits

8/3/2026 at 5:20:08 AM

There are transcripts. I'm assuming those can be translated and read by screen readers, but good reminder, let me check!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:37:01 AM

Very human, well done! Thank you!

by vivid242

8/3/2026 at 5:40:50 AM

Thank you!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 5:13:53 AM

love the idea! I had a similar thing on my todo list :) Glad u made it.

by chinchang

8/3/2026 at 5:35:21 AM

\o/

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 10:06:50 AM

seems cool. but is bloging still alive?

by mehraban

8/3/2026 at 4:47:08 AM

Well I hoped it was some kind of SVG with alt text for copy.

Turns out it's just a webp.

by est

8/3/2026 at 5:08:25 AM

Intersting idea!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:32:17 AM

This is beautiful!

by vishnukvmd

8/3/2026 at 4:58:14 AM

Thank you!

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:33:25 AM

Who is this for though?

As a writer, a lot of times I am writing over 5,000 words in a single article. I can type at around 170 wpm but my wrist starts hurting the moment I write more than three pages in my journal. I also use a split ergonomic keyboard which helps my hands a lot. I also revise my writing heavily which is very hard to do with handwritten stuff.

For readers, it will maybe be a novelty but I don't really see why anyone will prefer reading content that is handwritten since it has a lot of accessibility problems which are solved with proper typesetting.

I could see the value if it was a collection of interesting notes or unique handwriting styles etc. But i don't think its usuable as a blogging platform imo

by altmanaltman

8/3/2026 at 4:59:43 AM

For myself, it's really about slowing down my thinking. It's definitely not meant for _efficient_ writing :)

by emilesilvis

8/3/2026 at 4:40:53 AM

Blog posts don’t need to be 5000 words nor do you need to write them on one sitting (or under 30 minutes).

For wrist fatigue having better paper and pen help a lot, but part of it is just using the muscles and not having a death grip.

This being said I don’t like that this is hand writing with a device. It just isn’t the same as actual physical media.

by nextlevelwizard

8/3/2026 at 7:09:23 AM

Yeah they don't need to be. But what about revising and editing? You will just straight up write the perfect thing in first go? What about accesibility for the reader?

And yeah I can learn how to write better with my hand but i can also learn how to be a swordfighter. But I don't see how that should be a prerequisite for a blogging platform.

I am not saying nobody will ever like this. But as someone who has used blogging platforms for a long time to be considered a power user, the stated comment was my prespective.

by altmanaltman