The human behind the alien

“How do you even pronounce that?”

It’s almost always the first question. ETeext, two e’s stuck together, a trailing x… I’ve heard “ee-text,” “ee-tee-ext,” even “eh-twext” — nice try. The phonetic answer is /iː.tiː.kst/. In other words: E.T. pronounced the English way, like the extraterrestrial, then, if you know a little English, it turns into something like “EE-tee-ekst.” Say it however you like!

So the little alien in the logo isn’t a designer’s whim: it’s a statement. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by UAP — the phenomena we used to call UFOs, back before the subject became respectable. One day, perhaps, someone from up there (if they exist — the answer stays intractable) will want to style their writing. In the meantime, I’ve built a tool for us Earthlings.

From early computing to giant robots — and to small characters

But let me introduce myself. My name is Denis C.d.muro (you know how to search, so you’ll find my name). For decades, I’ve been getting machines to do precise things.

Robots first. A 1984 graduate of one of the only industrial-robotics programs that existed in France at the time, I spent the ’80s and ’90s rolling out 3D CAD when almost no one knew what it was — at Michelin, at companies of every kind, at Swiss watchmakers, then at a firm where I developed Europe’s first giant 5-axis machining centre to make huge wooden parts, 36 metres long.

Then I founded a French company to produce large composite parts with 5-axis robots, for clients like Airbus, Bénéteau and the Sagrada Família. Later came the launch of a robotic production unit in Istanbul, then twelve years of international trade from Luxembourg.

Along the way, I got to know the very first version of Microsoft Word — at a time when it wasn’t even available in France yet (thanks to my bosses back then in Strasbourg, geniuses of CAD/CAM in their day). And somewhere in the mid-’90s, my first steps on the Internet with a 9600-baud modem. Writing tools, the web and I go back a long way.

Before all that, there was 1985: a paratrooper in the 11ᵉ RPC, 11e régiment parachutiste de choc. — an elite unit, a little more than “military” — whose motto has never left me: « Qui ose gagne » — Who Dares Wins.

The spark

Life, though, doesn’t only draw straight lines. From 2017 to 2024, hard events led me to set everything aside. Seven years devoted to what mattered most. When that chapter closed, one thing was clear: I wanted to build again.

The spark came while exploring “styled text” generators — a real user frustration. Ageing tools, saturated with ads, broken accents, characters picked carelessly. Yet a piece of text you paste into an article or a message is about precision: the right character, in the right place, that displays everywhere. After a lifetime spent piloting machines to a tenth of a millimetre, tending to characters down to the code point felt almost obvious.

ETeext was born from that: a carefully made text generator, designed multilingual from day one — 13 languages today, that treats accents with the respect they deserve. Built alone, end to end, with the modern tools at my disposal — driven with the same rigour as my machines of old.

About languages: I live in French, I’ve worked in English since the ’80s, I get by in Italian — and I have a few memories of school German, which I salute from afar. When it came to deciding whether ETeext would speak one language or many — and whether proper handling of our languages’ accented letters was non-negotiable — the question didn’t really arise.

As for the rest, I’m an unabashed jack-of-all-trades: guitar, science fiction, travel, jazz, reading in English. And if some evening you look up and something unexplained crosses the sky… think of me.