Show HN: QR code renderer in a TrueType font

Show HN: QR code renderer in a TrueType font(qr.jim.sh)

62 points by foodevl 3 days ago | 12 comments

In the "Libre Barcode Project" discussion yesterday, 1bpp asked: "Is anyone willing to sacrifice their sanity for the sake of implementing a QR renderer as TTF hinting code?"

Yes. I had some tokens to burn and was curious... turns out, it's possible. This was put together by a mix of Gemini, GPT, and Claude (depending on which usage limits kept running out).

layer8 2 hours ago |

Side question: Why is nobody making QR codes on web pages clickable (regardless if it’s an image or text-based)? Not every QR code represents a URL, of course, but many do. Maybe there should be a qrcode URL scheme that lets browsers behave the same way as a camera scanning a QR code.

lifthrasiir 2 hours ago |

See https://github.com/jimparis/qr-font/blob/master/design.md for the actual design. As who have written a QR code encoder library... I'm in shock and awe.

foodevl 3 days ago |

1bpp's comment suggesting this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48682460

jqpabc123 16 minutes ago |

Impressive work!

Not mentioned is the fact that the resulting QR Fonts are huge --- much larger than the javascript needed to render a QR code.

WenboS 3 days ago |

This is absolute black magic. I never realized OpenType rules were powerful enough to render something as complex as a QR matrix inline.

layer8 1 hour ago | |

It’s basically Turing-complete: https://simoncozens.github.io/fonts-and-layout/features.html

Once something is Turing-complete, the magic turns from black to white. ;)

giraffe_lady 2 hours ago | |

Font shaping rules are actually turing complete. An incredible amount of engineering effort has gone into this not being a total disaster everywhere at all times.

bigboss2700 2 days ago |

That's a wonderfully cursed idea.

magnat 1 hour ago |

Selecting parts of the code (in F7 mode or with SHIFT-LEFT/RIGHT) highlights which individual pixels corresponds to the actual letters.

henryagi 32 minutes ago |

That's a wonderfully idea. I Like

red_hare 2 hours ago |

Wow. This is so freaking cool.

1bpp 2 days ago |

This is terrifying, great job!