Planet Neptune Enterprise
Learn & support
The history and materials science that the simulation is built on — plus practical guides for getting work out of the app.
8 min read
The Nag Hammadi codices — 4th century CE
Thirteen leather-bound papyrus codices were found near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. Their scribes wrote Coptic uncial: square, heavy letterforms with thick uprights and thin crossings, the natural result of a reed cut at roughly 45° and held at a fixed angle. Body text was carbon black — lampblack soot bound with gum arabic, which never fades because the pigment is elemental carbon. Titles and initials were rubricated in red ochre, an iron-oxide earth pigment.
6 min read
How papyrus was made — and why it drinks ink
Cyperus papyrus stems were sliced into strips, laid in two crossed layers, pressed and dried until the plant's own sap glued them together. The result is a fibrous, cross-laid sheet with an open surface: ink travels along the fibres by capillary action, so every stroke gains a soft, slightly feathered edge that no modern coated paper produces.
5 min read
Absorption, feathering and bleed
A fountain pen line on blotting paper can appear half again as wide as the nib that drew it. Absorbent, rough sheets pull ink outward along the fibre; smooth, closed sheets hold the line sharp but stay wet far longer, which is why show-through and offsetting are problems on coated stock rather than on newsprint.
5 min read
Pencil grades and wear
H grades carry more clay and less graphite: they stay sharp far longer but need pressure to make a mark, and they can score the paper. B grades are graphite-rich, dark and soft, so the tip blunts within a page or two. Scribe Simulator Studio tracks that wear stroke by stroke, moving the tip from sharp through sharp-ish and dull to blunt, and widening the line as it goes.
4 min read
Why real handwriting is never uniform
Hands drift off the baseline, spacing tightens and loosens, slant wanders with wrist angle, and pressure falls as the muscles tire. Reproducing those four variables — plus fatigue accumulating down the page — is the difference between a handwriting font and something that reads as written by a person.
7 min read
Preparing a handwritten book for print
Print services expect 300 DPI, a 3mm bleed on trimmed edges, crop marks, embedded fonts and a colour space they can separate. Export from Scribe Simulator Studio's PDF dialog with bleed and crop marks enabled, choose your trim size, and the file will pass KDP and IngramSpark preflight.