rows containing elements with weight classes such as w1 through w9. The project previously used a DOM-measurement model: it rendered candidate text into a hidden span, measured its width, and decided whether to keep adding characters for the current pixel or advance to the next pixel. The new model should avoid repeated DOM measurement during rendering. Instead, it should use precomputed character-width data from a lookup file such as font-widths.js, or dynamically generate that width data once before rendering. Immediate deliverable: Create a clean browser-based renderer using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and canvas. Produce: 1. index.html 2. typographic-renderer.js 3. optional font-widths.js example file Do not build a WordPress plugin yet. Do not implement multi-image/page/frame support yet. Leave clear placeholder functions/comments for future support. Each sampled image pixel represents one horizontal output cell. The renderer should calculate a target cell width based on the intended rendered font size and/or a configurable cellWidth value. Use character-width data to accumulate characters until the accumulated rendered width is equal to or greater than that target cell width. Then advance to the next sampled pixel. Add this setting: cellWidth: null, If cellWidth is null, derive it from the configured font size or from the measured/rendered output context. Keep this calculation simple and clearly commented. Core idea: - Look at the current sampled image pixel. - Determine the needed font weight from the pixel’s grayscale value. - Get the next source-text character. - Use a character-width lookup to determine how much horizontal space that character occupies at the chosen weight. - Keep accumulating characters for the current pixel/position until the text width is sufficient to advance. - Continue through the image grid row by row. - Output optimized HTML. The width data system should support two modes: - lookup mode: load font-widths.js and use its declared font family, weights, and character widths. - dynamic mode: measure the needed characters for the configured font and weights at startup, build the width table in memory, and optionally allow export/save of the generated width file. The font-widths.js file should be treated as a cache, not as a requirement. The renderer should be able to work from either a prebuilt lookup file or a dynamic measurement pass. Expected font-widths.js structure: The width lookup file should define a predictable global object, for example: ```json window.TypographicFontWidths = { fontFamily: 'Noto Serif', measurementFontSize: 100, units: 'px', fontWeights: [100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900], widths: { '100': { 'A': 72, 'B': 68, ' ': 28 }, '200': { 'A': 73, 'B': 69, ' ': 28 } } }; ``` The renderer should use this object when fontWidthMode is 'lookup'. Character widths may be measured at a large size, such as 100px, for better precision. During rendering, widths should be scaled down according to the actual output font size. If a character is missing from the lookup table, use a fallback width: 1. width for the same weight’s space character, if appropriate for whitespace; 2. width for the same weight’s average character width, if available; 3. a configured fallback width. Use jQuery style compatible with: jQuery(document).ready(function($) { // code here }); Configuration model: var settings = { // Source files myimage: 'monster.jpg', mytext: 'coleporter.txt', // Future-compatible source structure // For now, use myimage. Later, images may support multiple frames/pages. images: null, // Image sampling imageScale: 0.6, gridWidth: 198, gridHeight: 300, // Text behavior repeatText: true, shuffle: false, returnReplacement: '', rowBreakCharacter: '_', whiteSpace: ' ', // Blank-pixel behavior treatTransparentAsBlank: true, treatWhiteAsBlank: false, // Intro emphasis introCharacterCount: 13, introForcedWeight: 7, // Rendering mode renderInColor: false, jitterflag: false, invert: false, // Font/width model fontSize: '16px'; lineHeight: fontWidthMode: 'lookup', // 'lookup' or 'dynamic' fontWidthsFile: 'font-widths.js', fontFamily: 'Noto Serif', fontWeights: [100,200,300,400,500,600,700,800,900], numberOfWeights: 9, // Output optimization optimizeTags: true, // Diagnostics diagnosticBackgroundMode: 'altKey', showBackgroundByDefault: false, // Export / future output enableHTMLExport: false, exportMode: 'single-file', // Text cleanup processTitles: 'TITLE:', convertAsterisk: ' ', cleanTilde: true, // Cache busting cacheBustText: true, cacheBustImage: false }; Setting definitions: myimage: The source image file used for the current rendering. mytext: The source text file. The text is consumed character by character as the image is rendered. images: Future option. An array of image files. For now, do not implement multi-image rendering unless explicitly requested. Leave room for later support where text can continue across multiple images, pages, or animation frames. imageScale: A scale factor applied to gridWidth and gridHeight before sampling the image. This replaces older setting name percen. gridWidth: The width, in sampled image pixels, of the image grid used for rendering. Do not rename this to columns, because future versions may support actual text columns separately. gridHeight: The height, in sampled image pixels, of the image grid used for rendering. If gridWidth or gridHeight are undefined, use the natural loaded image dimensions, optionally modified by imageScale. repeatText: If true, source text repeats when the renderer reaches the end. If false, rendering stops consuming text and fills remaining output with whiteSpace. shuffle: If true, shuffle the source text by lines before rendering. returnReplacement: If the source text contains a newline or carriage return, replace it with this printable character/string instead of preserving the actual line break. Examples could include '', '•', '|', a paragraph mark, or a space. rowBreakCharacter: A control character in the source text that forces the renderer to advance to the next output row. This is used for manually controlling line placement, such as headings, dates, addresses, or salutation lines. whiteSpace: The string used for blank pixels or empty output, usually ' '. treatTransparentAsBlank: If true, transparent pixels output whiteSpace and do not consume a source-text character. treatWhiteAsBlank: If true, white pixels output whiteSpace and do not consume a source-text character. Default should be false, because white may be intentional image content. The user may enable it for JPGs or white-background images. introCharacterCount: The number of initial source-text characters that should receive a forced weight. introForcedWeight: The weight class forced onto the first introCharacterCount characters. This is meant to make an opening phrase or title more legible. renderInColor: If true, grayscale still controls font weight, but each pixel’s RGB color is also converted into a CSS color class. The output character receives both the weight class and the color class. jitterflag: If true, add small random vertical-offset classes to the generated tags. invert: Controls whether dark pixels map to heavier or lighter weight classes. Preserve the existing visual expectation, but make the mapping clear in comments. fontWidthMode: 'lookup' uses fontWidthsFile. 'dynamic' generates character-width data at startup. fontWidthsFile: Path to the precomputed width lookup file. fontFamily: The font used for rendering and/or dynamic measurement. fontWeights: The actual CSS font-weight values used by the renderer. numberOfWeights: Usually 9. The renderer should map grayscale into w1 through w9. optimizeTags: If true, combine adjacent characters with identical class sets into a single element. Prefer optimizing during output generation rather than using a regex cleanup pass afterward. diagnosticBackgroundMode: Controls how the source image is shown behind the rendered typography for checking registration and sizing. Preferred mode is 'altKey'. Holding ALT should temporarily show the background image. Avoid using Control because Control is needed for browser zooming and is distracting. showBackgroundByDefault: If true, show the source image behind the output initially. enableHTMLExport: Future/optional. The renderer should eventually be able to export a static HTML version of the finished output. exportMode: Future/optional. Possible values may include 'fragment', 'single-file', or 'multi-file'. For now, single-file export is the most useful future target. processTitles: If set, lines beginning with this marker are processed as title lines. Prior behavior uppercased the title text and cleaned the marker. convertAsterisk: If set, replace asterisks in the source text with this value. cleanTilde: If true, remove or normalize tilde markers used during title processing. cacheBustText: If true, append a timestamp query string to the text file URL. cacheBustImage: If true, append a timestamp query string to the image file URL. fontSize: The intended CSS font size, in pixels, used for scaling measured character widths. cellWidth: The target width represented by one sampled image pixel. If null, use fontSize as a simple default. This can be refined later. Rendering details: The renderer should: 1. Load settings. 2. Load the source text. 3. Apply text preprocessing: - optional shuffle - HTML entity decoding - title processing - asterisk conversion - tilde cleanup - returnReplacement handling during rendering 4. Load the source image. 5. Draw the image to a canvas at the effective grid size. 6. Read pixel data. 7. Prepare font-width data: - if fontWidthMode is 'lookup', load font-widths.js. - if fontWidthMode is 'dynamic', measure the needed character set once and build the lookup. 8. Render row by row. 9. For each pixel: - determine whether the pixel is blank. - if blank, output whiteSpace and do not consume a text character. - otherwise, calculate grayscale. - map grayscale to w1 through w9. - optionally apply introForcedWeight for the first introCharacterCount consumed characters. - optionally add a pixel color class if renderInColor is true. - use width lookup to accumulate character width. - advance through the source text as needed. 10. Emit each image row as a
. 11. Optimize adjacent tags if enabled. 12. Insert final HTML into #typography-output. 13. If renderInColor is enabled, inject only the color classes actually used. 14. Add diagnostic background behavior. Important behavior to preserve from the older script: - The text can repeat or stop. - Transparent pixels can be skipped without consuming text. - A rowBreakCharacter can force the renderer to advance to the next row. - returnReplacement converts real source-text line breaks into visible printable characters. - introCharacterCount and introForcedWeight can force the opening characters to a selected weight. - renderInColor uses pixel color classes while grayscale still determines weight. - output rows are wrapped in
tags.
- adjacent identical classes can be optimized.
Important change from the older script:
Do not repeatedly measure rowTemp or candidate letters using hidden DOM spans during the main render loop. The new model should use math based on character-width lookup data.
Production workflow context:
The rendered HTML is usually an intermediate working artifact. The final artwork may be printed to PDF, then opened in Photoshop as a bitmap at final print size, such as 24 inches wide at 300dpi, for final production adjustments. The renderer should therefore produce stable, repeatable HTML that can be printed or saved cleanly.
Future-compatible architecture:
Do not hard-code assumptions that would block later:
- multiple source images
- text continuing across image frames
- page breaks between rendered images
- HTML export
- animation frames
- WordPress integration
Future WordPress mode may use:
- post_content as source text
- Featured Image as source image
- ACF fields or a JSON settings string as configuration
- presets/taxonomies only for broad categories, not detailed technical settings
Do not implement the WordPress plugin unless explicitly requested. For now, keep the browser renderer clean and modular enough that it could later be adapted into a WordPress plugin.
Do not change the visual model unless requested. The immediate goal is to replace DOM measure-as-you-go rendering with lookup-based width math while preserving the existing output behavior.
Bear in mind that the developer here is more of an artist than a coder, so it is important to keep the code extremely simple, avoiding over-optimization and use of complex statements or "elseif", though switch/case is tolerable. Even a ternary operator is ok, if it is simple and easy to read. Comment liberally.
Initial CSS:
```CSS
* {box-sizing: border-box;}
body {
font-family: "Dosis", serif;
font-weight: 900;
font-optical-sizing: auto;
font-style: normal;
font-size: 24px;
line-height: 19px;
text-align: center;
letter-spacing: -0.003em;
background-color: black;
color: white;
padding-top: 1em;
margin: 0 auto;
}
div#typography-output {
background-size: contain;
background-position: center center;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
display: inline-block;
margin: 0 auto;
}
@media print {
div#typography-output { background-image: none!important; }
}
div#typography-output:hover { background-image: none!important; }
p {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
width: 100%;
text-align: justify-all;
text-align-last: justify;
}
.w1 { font-weight: 100; -webkit-text-stroke: .001em; }
.w2 { font-weight: 200; -webkit-text-stroke: .002em; }
.w3 { font-weight: 300; -webkit-text-stroke: .003em; }
.w4 { font-weight: 400; -webkit-text-stroke: .004em; }
.w5 { font-weight: 500; -webkit-text-stroke: .005em; }
.w6 { font-weight: 600; -webkit-text-stroke: .006em; color: #db0000;}
.w7 { font-weight: 700; -webkit-text-stroke: .007em; color: #b70000;}
.w8 { font-weight: 800; -webkit-text-stroke: .008em; color: #930000;}
.w9 { font-weight: 900; -webkit-text-stroke: .009em; color: #710000;}
/* jitters */
.j1 {top:-0.06em;}
.j2 {top: -0.04em;}
.j3 {top: -0.03em;}
.j4 {top: -0.02em;}
.j5 {top: -0.01em;}
.j6 {top: 0.01em;}
.j7 {top: 0.02em;}
.j8 {top: 0.03em;}
.j9 {top: 0.04em;}
i { font-style: normal; position: relative;}
```
Sample CSS for color option:
```CSS
.ofaf3e7{color:#faf3e7}
.ofcf3ea{color:#fcf3ea}
.ofbf1e9{color:#fbf1e9}
.ofcf2ea{color:#fcf2ea}
.ofbf2e8{color:#fbf2e8}
.of9efe6{color:#f9efe6}
.of6eee5{color:#f6eee5}
.of7f0e8{color:#f7f0e8}
```
Example output:
```HTML
inevitably open th...
Ab...
```