Maybe it's not practical for day-to-day use but the way this hacks the font to produce something completely different is amazing!
jhogervorst 20 hours ago [-]
A fun benefit seems to be that you can select the QR code as text and copy it, which puts the original text in your clipboard.
trillic 22 hours ago [-]
Font rendering should scare you
b112 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed, I have all font downloads off in all my browsers, by default.
shreddit 23 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t seem to like spaces that much, the code for [QR coded] is broken for me on safari ios. When the space is removed it’s a working qrcode again
jeroenhd 7 hours ago [-]
It looks like Safari doesn't render this correctly (checked on macOS). Works fine in Chrome and Firefox, though. Must be a Safari quirk of some kind.
diroussel 21 hours ago [-]
The page addresses this issue, saying that browser text wrapping can cause issues and gives advice on how to deal with it.
jrmg 21 hours ago [-]
I think this is a different problem.
The page says that “browsers may split a QR code across lines” - but this isn’t split across lines.
Experimenting, if I just type "[Q R]" (very short, so not likely to line-break), the problem still occurs.
If I inspect the element, and add `white-space: nowrap;` to its style, the problem still occurs (although the text doesn’t wrap!).
foodevl 17 hours ago [-]
I haven't tried on macos, but yeah, the biggest problem right now seems to be implementation differences with how embedded spaces are handled. Earlier, the biggest cross-browser issues were pixel alignments within the QR codes, but those seem largely resolved.
notRobot 3 hours ago [-]
This is SO COOL. Works perfectly in FF for me, if it can be made to work in safari then this might be one of the easiest ways to generate and display QR codes on the front-end.
maguay 11 hours ago [-]
This ... means the page could render a QR code for humans while letting bots see the actual URL. That is incredibly cool.
dspillett 5 hours ago [-]
Or with some tweaks to the font code they could see a different URL…
This could be used for good (diverting bots away from where you don't want them) or evil (different destinations for user and other readers of the page could be used to trick people going to undesirable locations, because the apparent URL checks out find according to automated scanners).
bulder 3 hours ago [-]
Conventional web technologies already can handle this kind of use case, either by wrapping an image in a link tag, or using an alt= value.
andix 23 hours ago [-]
Impressive, but on iOS 27 even one of the examples don't work. Seems like it has an issue with spaces. https://imgur.com/a/tZGqtjR
jeroenhd 7 hours ago [-]
Checked on my phone, Chrome+Firefox work, WebKit (through wpe-android) doesn't. Safari and WebKit can't render this font for some reason, I suppose.
23 hours ago [-]
diroussel 21 hours ago [-]
Did you read the explanation? It says right there on the page why it happens.
Or was that text added since you viewed it?
Groxx 17 hours ago [-]
The only thing I'm seeing there is that line-wrapping might do [something], and a suggested workaround (which, oddly, they don't implement on the page). And the line-wrapping issue doesn't look like that to me, at least when I do it.
andix 20 hours ago [-]
I probably didn’t read it. But I also had to read it twice to understand what it meant.
I’m still not sure if this is the mentioned issue or a different one.
foodevl 17 hours ago [-]
Just glancing I would say it seems a bit different.
andonumb 20 hours ago [-]
Great idea, but it's a shame that it only supports Basic Latin (English-only).
Fair warning though: this was designed and implemented by an LLM, as an experiment to see if it was possible. I only guided it to a working solution by pointing out problems, and never dug deeply into its inner workings.
karunamurti 19 hours ago [-]
OpenType specification is Turing complete, its hinting engine does math during rasterization and its GSUB (Glyph Substitution, a layout and shaping engine) does glyph stacking, QR code correction, etc to finalize the QR. The nice thing about it is if you copy and paste it, it goes to the original text.
What a vector (no pun intended) for malware or other computation…
altairprime 20 hours ago [-]
That’s a common downside of HN: submitters often link the GitHub repository rather than the project’s explanation. The article’s had the project link added at the top (just below the GitHub link) and it has a much clearer story.
LoganDark 23 hours ago [-]
Spaces are definitely broken in Safari.
Rendered at 17:48:50 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The page says that “browsers may split a QR code across lines” - but this isn’t split across lines.
Experimenting, if I just type "[Q R]" (very short, so not likely to line-break), the problem still occurs.
If I inspect the element, and add `white-space: nowrap;` to its style, the problem still occurs (although the text doesn’t wrap!).
This could be used for good (diverting bots away from where you don't want them) or evil (different destinations for user and other readers of the page could be used to trick people going to undesirable locations, because the apparent URL checks out find according to automated scanners).
Or was that text added since you viewed it?
I’m still not sure if this is the mentioned issue or a different one.
Fair warning though: this was designed and implemented by an LLM, as an experiment to see if it was possible. I only guided it to a working solution by pointing out problems, and never dug deeply into its inner workings.