Signs, glyphs, and tooltips

[Stroam]

What if signs didn't say what you wrote. What if like the github icon they used an algorithm to generate a pattern on the sign and then when you got close enough to select the sign a floaty box like they have for the chests pops up and has the text you want to say?

Uses:

• Can put more text than can fit on a sign. (Fixes the giant sign issue Milo was having for his tutorial map)
• Can also apply to blocks with "hieroglyphs".
• Lore specific - The tooltip doesn't pop up unless you know the language it's written in.
• Can learn different languages by finding and consuming lore books found in ruins.
• When placing a sign you can select one of the languages you know and now only people who can read that language can read what you wrote on the sign.

I think this would be another layer of immersion as well as solving the issue of signs not being big enough for the text you want to write. What do you all think?
For instance if you knew the language of the Incas you'd be able to tell in a tool tip what this quipu said.

[redram]

I can definitely imagine scenarios it would be useful in.  At the same time, I think I'd prefer the existing mechanic as far as signs that I use to label chests, or make other simple notations.  I don't really want to have to get within a certain range of them to read them.  What if the glyph type sign was a different kind of sign?  Then we could have best of both worlds.

[Elwood]

this is a neat idea for multiplayer.  maybe your friends and your clan can read what you wrote but others see glyphs.    could be built on a skill mechanic where a skill level applies to the name of a clan. You need to collect lore from that clan to read the signs or gain through trading.    But i agree we still need a plain one or be able to set the clan to neutral so everyone can read some of them. 

people could say "I couldnt understand the server rules"

[Stroam]

The range would be the selectable range so chances are if you can open the chest next to the sign, you can read the sign. Obviously everyone would start out with common and be able to read any sign written in common.

[Milo Christiansen]

I don't like this idea much at all. Text *on* signs is far nicer than text that pops up when you get near, even if space is limited.