Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Wow, what a beautiful site, and beautiful typeface (reminds me a great deal of Minion, which was chosen to set The Elements of Typographic Style).

And an absolutely fascinating investigation. It's almost like the famous quote of not being able to define something (pornography), but knowing it when you see it. [1]

Typography, with its rhythms, is almost the purest example of this. It's so easy for a good designer to kern, set linespacing, etc. until it "looks right" to your eye. But I wouldn't even know where to begin to try to translate this into an algorithm -- because it's not just about spacing between letters, but having that spacing be harmonious as well with the structures within letters (like the horizontal rhythm of an "m").

I personally suspect it's something close to trying to equalize the "area" between adjacent letterforms, but the problem is that depending on angles, case, etc. that "area" is a "blob" we feel, not an easy calculation. I wouldn't be suprised if the best approximation involves some kind of fuzzy-bitmap blobs, rather than any hard of hard exact calculations.

I look forward to reading more research results!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

The "famous quote" is about obscenity, not pornography.

The most famous opinion from Jacobellis, however, was Justice Potter Stewart's concurrence, holding that the Constitution protected all obscenity except "hard-core pornography." Stewart wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

and the famous tl;dr of that is: "whatever gives the judge an erection".

Pasting a wikipedia article does not end an argument.

Have you read Jacobellis? When you do, please respond using your own words. In case you do not have WestLaw open in front of you:

https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/378/378.US.184.11....

And here I thought my appeal to the anonymous, crowd-sourced authority of Wikipedia would totally work.

Thanks for the link. I've read it, and all I can say is that, in my highly unqualified opinion, the two things seem to be treated with enough overlap that we'd be, at best, quibbling, at least relative to how much I care about the distinction, if nothing else. That said, for someone with extensive formal training in the subject, I can also see how the distinction would make all the difference. The devil being in the details, and all.

So my response, then, is this:

You originally took issue with it being about obscenity, and not hard-core pornography (which seems to be the more common view, correct or not). Stating that it's about obscenity, not pornography, does not end an argument. And, when you cite the decision, please offer your own words supporting your own interpretation.

You started out with an unreasoned, unsupported correction to his comment. I accept that you're trying to support it by citing Jacobellis, which may be sufficient in a room full of lawyers, but I don't think it is here.

I'm completely open to being convinced on this, but you're probably going to have to do some actual convincing for that to happen.

And while you're at it, if you think Wikipedia's wrong and can so demonstrate, please go correct it, and add your reasoning to the Talk page.

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