Pretext – pure-arithmetic text measurement for proportional fonts
Pretext is an interactive tool designed for precise text measurement in proportional fonts. It features a multi-column layout with real-time text reflow and various typographic experiments. The tool also compares different justification methods and explores the use of ASCII art in typography.
- ▪Pretext allows for zero layout thrashing and provides instant results.
- ▪It includes a multi-column layout with draggable orbs and real-time text reflow at 60fps.
- ▪The tool compares CSS fit-content with pretext to determine the tightest width for multiline text.
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Story provenance
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Github |
| Canonical URL | https://somnai-dreams.github.io/pretext-demos/ |
| Publication time | Sat, 16 May 2026 07:31:14 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-16T07:40:17.734Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-16T07:40:17.734Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | pkerFbCHwGWw |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Pretext Interactive experiments built on pretext — pure-arithmetic text measurement for proportional fonts. Zero layout thrashing, instant results. The Editorial Engine Layout Multi-column editorial layout with draggable orbs and real-time text reflow at 60fps. Fluid Smoke ASCII Art Full-screen fluid simulation rendered as proportional typographic ASCII. Justification Compared Layout Side-by-side CSS greedy, hyphenated, and Knuth-Plass optimal justification with river detection. Variable Typographic ASCII ASCII Art Particle system mapped to characters selected by brightness and width across 3 weights. Shrinkwrap Showdown Layout CSS fit-content vs pretext — finding the exact tightest width for multiline text.
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Github.
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