From: jameskass@att.net
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 14:44:31 EDT
John Hudson wrote,
> At 06:47 AM 24-10-02, Otto Stolz wrote:
>
> >David J. Perry had written:
> >>An OpenType font that is smart enough to substitute a long s glyph at the
> >>right spots is the much superior long-term solution.
> >
> >This will not work, cf. infra.
>
> To be accurate, it works for display of English but not for German. The
> British convention for using the long-s can be handled contextually,
> because it does not need to consider whether the letter is occuring at the
> beginning or end of a syllable. We've implemented this successfully in
> OpenType fonts using the Historical Forms <hist> feature. German presents a
> much more difficult problem.
>
Looking at a copy of "Of the Law-Terms: A Discourse Written by The
Learned Antiquary. Sir Henry Spelman, Kt." (1684 edition) here. Use
of initial/medial "s" versus final "s" is straightforward except in
cases like "Malmesbury" and "Sarisburiam", in which the final "s"
is used medially.
Looking at a Fraktur book published in 1917, which is neither English
nor German, use of the long "s" appears almost whimsical. Words like
"historie" and "utgivelse" use the long "s", while words like
"oplysninger" and "ensformig" use the final "s" medially. (The title
of the book is "En norsk bygds historie".)
Best regards,
James Kass.
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