On 12/07/2010 19:38, Peter Baker wrote:
On 07/12/2010 11:44 AM, Will Robertson wrote:
If you typeset the word λόγου with and without 'hist' you will see
a difference.
Thanks for the suggestion; unfortunately I think these fonts only have historical
ligatures (hlig) rather than historical alternates (hist).
Cheers,
Will
I've got an impression that it's fairly common for the hist feature to include just one
entry: s --> longs. In my (ahem) new Eadui script font (at openfontlibrary.org) the hist
feature medievalizes the style, turning it from
old-fashioned-but-suitable-for-modern-text to nearly-a-manuscript-facsimile. Add in hlig
and it becomes so authentic it's nearly illegible.
[quite off-topic]
In 19th-century Rome, a prince and mathematician named Baldassare Boncompagni[1] ran his
own publishing house and scholarly journal on history of mathematics and physics, the
“Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze mathematiche e fisiche”. Boncompagni
was the editor of the works of Leonardo Pisano (Fibonacci) and was utterly obsessed with
diplomatic (i.e. paleographic) accuracy. He employed a network of assistants throughout
Europe who sent him expertly drawn facsimiles of historical documents (I have seen some
spectacular ones in archives). He also attempted to reproduce sources in his journal as
authentically as possible, and therefore his printing press eventually had an formidable
collection of cast types at its disposal, for dozens of scripts, and for countless
historical ligatures and abbreviations. In those days, printing
nearly-a-manuscript-facsimile made some sense, as photographic or even lithographic
reproductions were not yet possible. Yet later generations of scholars made fun of
Boncompani's meticulous diplomatic craze. They would be quite surprised to learn that in
the 21st century, people design digital fonts capable of doing exactly the kind of things
cherished by Boncompagni!
This [http://openfontlibrary.org/content/psb6m/177/sample.png] is indeed fascinating and,
I find, totally legible (so I assume it doesn't have 'hlig'?). Fortunately this is not a
reproduction of, say, a 15th-century German scholar's handwriting, which would be per
definitionem totally illegible :)
Still, I cannot refrain from asking: what is exactly the point of such fonts? Any edition
of an historical text should be first and foremost legible and intelligible to modern
readers, without distracting them. To accurately reproduce an original source, digital
color photos do a far better job, no?
FC
[1] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldassarre_Boncompagni
--------------------------------------------------
Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
