
KernType – A Kerning Game - kristianc
http://type.method.ac/#
======
kstrauser
Your periodic reminder that bad kerning distracted Donald Knuth from TAOCP for
a decade or so, setting our industry back countless person-millennia. Do not
trifle with kerning. It’s a different kind of Turing tarpit for software
engineers.

~~~
CrazyStat
But how many person-millennia has it saved for all the people who don't need
to be distracted by bad kerning now?

~~~
kstrauser
That's an excellent point. It sure beats having 1,000 smart people each
spending 20 years independently solving the same problem.

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keyle
Wow after all the bad kerning jokes I can't believe I didn't think of this. So
well executed too, very addictive :)

Could 'juice'* it a little

(*)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg)

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pfdietz
Should have been called Kemtype

~~~
seanmcdirmid
When I started using the internet, I would read pom as porn given the horrible
font and terminal I was using. It made for some really awkward
misunderstandings.

~~~
userbinator
Google ReCAPTCHA, back when it was about OCR'ing books, has apparently made
that mistake with pom.xml --- no surprise, I bet 99% of people who saw a
CAPTCHA saying "pom" thought it said "porn".

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kccqzy
Nice game. But I find it frustrating not to be able to drag the last
character. My experience is that well-kerned text takes up overall less
horizontal space than unkerned text (i.e. most kerning adjustments are
negative), so I'm not sure why this game doesn't allow me to change that
overall width.

~~~
n3k5
Consider that you're not starting from 'no kerning', but from deliberately bad
kerning.

The overall width is a given because it tells you the tracking (letter-
spacing) you're aiming for. It's common for this parameter to be user-
selectable even when kerning is completely automatic (or to be automatically
adjusted for the purpose of justification), so when you are the kerning
algorithm, it's not your job to question that choice.

I can see how this can seem weird, as nominally you are responsible for
deciding the overall width. But if you had to try to continue the tracking
between the first two glyphs instead, or aim for e.g. "+20%", it would be much
more difficult.

Being able to continuously deal with the feeling of "they want me to do
WHAT!?" is one of the skills that distinguishes pro graphic designers from
amateurs ;)

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lilyball
I only did 2 words. The first word I almost perfectly nailed it. Only got
80/100\. Second word I was further off, got 88/100\. I don't understand the
scoring.

~~~
fourthark
I think the scoring depends too much on word length. I consistently did better
on longer words.

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ASTP001
Great concept, fun game. Wish it was more mobile friendly.

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_bxg1
Doesn't work in mobile Safari

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cbsks
I’m on mobile safari as well. I can drag the letters, but I can’t click the
“compare” burton.

~~~
_bxg1
I can't even drag the letters, or for that matter zoom out to see the cut off
text below them

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aasasd
Note that the site hosts a few other such games, which are all cool:
[https://method.ac](https://method.ac)

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tiborsaas
It's a good idea to complete it at least 1 time / year. Wish it had more
challenges.

~~~
duopixel
Author here. I’ve been meaning to release a second version of the game, will
probably tackle it in 2020 (this game is around eight years old and needs a
complete rewrite to work on mobile)

~~~
jraph
It works on Firefox Mobile on Android. However, one has to switch from
landscape to portrait mode back and forth to kern, and then to click on the
next button.

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MattRix
Not working at all in Chrome on my Pixel 2

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RandallBrown
Pretty fun. Very easy, but fun nonetheless.

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sandov
How had I not seen this before?

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stared
Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1015/](https://xkcd.com/1015/)

~~~
smexy
There's always a relevant xkcd...

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alpb
Bazillionth time it’s posted and discussed.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=type.method.ac](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=type.method.ac)
Not sure how HN even allows it.

~~~
dang
Reposts on HN are fine if a story hasn't had significant attention in the last
year or so. This has been the practice for many years here.

