Gothic fonts & letters

[llama_nom]

James Marchand writes: "The CODEX ARGENTEUS is written in an 
alphabet devised by Wulfila, though it seems quite likely that some 
changes have been made in the intervening century and a half. The 
Gothic alphabet has two styles, one (I will call it style I) using a 
sigma-like sign and a nasal suspension for n only, and the other (I 
will call it style II) uses the Latin and suspension marks for both 
n and m (Fairbanks and Magoun). The CA is written in Style II, and 
it seems quite likely that this is a later development, probably in 
Ostrogothic Italy. Various ligatures arise out of need for space, 
etc., and larger and smaller letters are used."

http://www.florin.ms/aleph2.html#argenteus

The following article by David Landau has lots of interesting stuff 
about the manuscripts including a table showing variant forms of the 
first few letters of the Gothic alphabet.

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~dla/report.pdf

So there´s a bit of variety.  The Codex Argenteus [ 
http://www.ub.uu.se/arv/codex/faksimiledition/contents.html ] has 
an "S" just like the Roman alphabet.  Other manuscripts have this 
sigma-inspired "S" that looks like a backwards "3".  You can see it 
in the photograph of Wiljariþ´s signiature on the Naples deed, p. 
246 of Peter Heather´s "The Goths", also illustrated more clearly in 
Bradley´s book of the same name (but I can´t remember which page).  
Online here [ http://www.gotica.de/ ], click on 
Verkaufsverträge/Urkunden.  The Bendekpuszta tablet (Fragmenta 
Pannonica) has an angular sigma-like "S".  But the Codex Gissensis 
has a Roman "S" like the Codex Argenteus.

> I also wonder if there's a font with gothic letters that is better 
to 
> use when writing in internet and documents etc. and that might 
contain 
> real spaces so it doesn't look like one whole word the whole 
sentence, 
> if you know what I mean.

I downloaded a font called "gothic 1" [ 
http://www.dafont.com/en/font.php?file=gothic1 ]--not sure if I got 
it from this site, but it looks the same.  Do you know any others 
that work?  It's fairly basic, with just one dot for punctuation.  
It can look blocky on Word if the letters are too small, but okay 
when they're big enough.  And if you type any key that isn't 
programmed for a Gothic letter, it jumps back to the most boring 
font: Arial.  If I want spaces, I just press space twice.

It would be nice to have one with ligatures, multiple dots for more 
punctuation, choice of "S", and the option of using modern 
punctuation too.

> If some one can explain to me, in short word, how to make an pdf I 
> would be very happy...

Do you have the program for making PDF files?  With that installed, 
you can convert a web page by clicking on the PDF symbol on the task 
bar of your browers.  Word documents can be converted by selecting 
print, then chosing "Adobe PFD" in the window that comes up, in the 
box that says "Name", instead of the name of a printer.  There's 
probably other ways to do it too, but that's what I do.

Llama Nom




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