At 20:37 -0800 2004-05-03, D. Starner wrote:
Again, change Hebrew to Latin and palaeo-Hebrew to Fraktur and see how many objections you get.
I should think far fewer; the legibility quotient is much different.
I have said before:
Set a German or Danish or Icelandic wedding invitation in Fraktur. No problem. Set an Irish wedding invitation in Gaelic. No problem. Set a Hebrew wedding invitation in Palaeo-Hebrew. Problem.
It's easy to decry "Fraktur and Gaelic are hard to read" but they AREN'T, and their use in invitations, menus, and signage is testament to that. The same does not obtain with Phoenician letterforms and Hebrew.
Again, no, you can't use archaic forms of letters in many situations, but that doesn't mean they aren't unified with the modern forms of letters.
From where I sit, it sure does. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
