I tried a few of the fonts.
I never really liked monospace
but I really dislike making decisions.
If I had to make a font,
I'd probably use monospace.
My understanding is the whole problem goes away with monospace, right?
Edit:
I am having a difficult time articulating my thoughts on this.
Let me just spell it out:
I think I can recognize truly horrible kerning.
It makes it very difficult to read.
However, the flip side is hard.
I don't think about kerning when things work (most of the time).
And I can't tell kerning issues from for example when I needed to use some Microsoft Windows Server machine who remembers back when and it didn't have ClearType.
All I can tell is it is difficult for me to read.
I can't really explain why.
The flip side, recognizing good kerning I think is very difficult for me.
I simply never think about it.
For computer science people, maybe think of it as a satisfiability problem?
It is fairly easy for a human to do the boolean satisfiability verification (where true is illegible and false is NOT illegible).
However, as soon as you turn boolean satisfiability verification to something like k-sat, now the classification becomes (almost?) impossible because it is now subjective?
Back to my simple terms, how can you say one kerning is better than another?
Does it depend on the opinion of the person reading?
Come to think of it, is kerning different in languages other than English?
Everything I have said so far is all about English...
> if you really hate someone, teach them to recognize bad kerning.
The city I'm living in was once famous for its printing history and there's a whole part of town full of old printworks that have slowly been converted to high price housing. One of the converted buildings has a stairwell that's fully visible through windows and it has in large vinyl letters different names of fonts in that specific font all over the walls. Like "papyrus" in Papyrus, "helvetica" in Helvetica, etc.
And the kerning of those words is just the worst. It's so bad, you'd think that there are random spaces in those words.
The kerning hurts my eyes. The irony pains me a few centimeters deeper.
I think this game somewhat agrees with you, because you can score 100% even if it looks like the deviation from the “solution” is not negligible. On the other side I think that “really good kerning” probably matters when it comes to type which is supposed to be looked at for a long time, or when it comes to graphics with much text, it feels like that good kerning consistency adds up to an overall more pleasant sight.
https://xkcd.com/1015/
I tried a few of the fonts. I never really liked monospace but I really dislike making decisions. If I had to make a font, I'd probably use monospace. My understanding is the whole problem goes away with monospace, right?
Edit:
I am having a difficult time articulating my thoughts on this.
Let me just spell it out: I think I can recognize truly horrible kerning. It makes it very difficult to read. However, the flip side is hard. I don't think about kerning when things work (most of the time). And I can't tell kerning issues from for example when I needed to use some Microsoft Windows Server machine who remembers back when and it didn't have ClearType. All I can tell is it is difficult for me to read. I can't really explain why.
The flip side, recognizing good kerning I think is very difficult for me. I simply never think about it.
For computer science people, maybe think of it as a satisfiability problem? It is fairly easy for a human to do the boolean satisfiability verification (where true is illegible and false is NOT illegible). However, as soon as you turn boolean satisfiability verification to something like k-sat, now the classification becomes (almost?) impossible because it is now subjective? Back to my simple terms, how can you say one kerning is better than another? Does it depend on the opinion of the person reading? Come to think of it, is kerning different in languages other than English? Everything I have said so far is all about English...