uncial latin script font

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:00 pm

saluete.

I'm trying to make a font that resembles latin uncial script. I've only seen some pictures of hand-copied scripts, and in none of them did I see periods and commas. I ask myself why did Greek have punctuations and lower-case letters and the Romans did not. Anyway, if anyone knows how were Roman's punctuations drawn, please tell me.

Right now all I have is what can be seen in the pictures below. The commas and periods are of course temporary.

amans · Post by **amans** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:34 pm

salue o Cyborg

Your font is really nice, my compliments!

Will you make it available to the general public here at Textkit?

In classical Greel there were only upper case letters. Lower case letters were introduced in Hellenistic times.

Misopogon · Post by **Misopogon** » Wed May 25, 2005 8:46 pm

Hi Cyborg,
I suggest you to find some good book on calliigraphy. Have a look at www.johnnealbooks.com
or
www.paperinkarts.com.
Some years ago I bought Medieval Calligraphy by Marc Drogin, but it covers medieval uncial but not ancient calligraphy. Maybe it could be useful a textbook on papyrology, someone here could suggest which one. Compliments, the font are nice.

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:01 pm

amans wrote:Will you make it available to the general public here at Textkit?

salue, amans. I will make it publicly available.

amans wrote:In classical Greel there were only upper case letters. Lower case letters were introduced in Hellenistic times.

Oh, I didn't know that, thanks. And what about punctuation?

Misopogon, thank you for the suggestion, but I'd really prefer seeing some more manuscripts than "seeing" them from second hand.

Thank you both for the compliments.

Misopogon · Post by **Misopogon** » Wed May 25, 2005 9:25 pm

Misopogon, thank you for the suggestion, but I'd really prefer seeing some more manuscripts than "seeing" them from second hand.

Here some collections online, most Greek but some in Latin
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/GrandLat/hawara/index.html
http://www.papyrologie.paris4.sorbonne. ... ctions.htm (the Latin page doesn't work today, try later)
http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~gv ... /Grad.html (most in greek)
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus ... latin.html

mingshey · Post by **mingshey** » Thu May 26, 2005 1:13 am

And there's the Schøyen Collection :
http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/contentnew3.html

and "Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents"
http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/CSAD/

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Thu May 26, 2005 3:36 am

Thanks for the links, people, but unfortunately I could only find one shed of papyrus on one of Misopogon's links, and some very late scripts on mingshey's first link.

And about that CSAD, I could never find any Classical Latin papyri there, despite everybody telling me they're there. If you have, can you show me some direct links? Thanks a bunch.

adz000 · Post by **adz000** » Thu May 26, 2005 1:31 pm

There aren't too many important classical Latin papyri. The most important is probably the fragment of Gallus found in Egypt, which dates to around the poet's own lifetime. But that is written in majuscules.

A good introduction with a good amount of plates is Thompson's An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography. Bischoff. Latin Palaeography (translated) gives a more theoretical introduction, but fewer pictures. If you want just plates, see if you can find a library that has the Codices latini antiquiores. Reinhold Merkelbach & Helmut Van Thiel, Lateinisches Leseheft is a small collection of nice facsimiles.
I've passed by the book Roman Handwriting at the Time of Christ by Paul Barry (2001) a few times, which may be helpful for you, but I've never looked at it.

Cheers! The font is looking great.

mingshey · Post by **mingshey** » Fri May 27, 2005 2:32 am

Cyborg wrote:And about that CSAD, I could never find any Classical Latin papyri there, despite everybody telling me they're there. If you have, can you show me some direct links? Thanks a bunch.

Well, no, I'm sorry. I've recommended CSAD as a reference to the general idea of old scripts, not specifically Latin, nor even on papyri.

Yhevhe · Post by **Yhevhe** » Sun May 29, 2005 2:57 am

That font looks like my handwriting.

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Sun May 29, 2005 11:12 pm

Yhevhe wrote:That font looks like my handwriting.

Oh, that's great (seriously) !
May you show me pictures of your punctuations? Please.

!"#$%&'()*+,-./
:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
0123456789

Yhevhe · Post by **Yhevhe** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 6:21 pm

They're really ugly, and don't differ much from other people's punctuations.

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 7:05 pm

Yhevhe wrote: They're really ugly, and don't differ much from other people's punctuations.

Well, I hope it does not differ much, otherwise people wouldn't be able to read.

But seriously, if you really cannot help me, than that's fine, I won't dislike you for that. But I'll have to take things like $, # and % completely out of my head, and it hardly will look like it's from the same classical style. Of course I wouldn't just use all of your symbols as-is, they would help me creating something within the classical style, and nothing better than being able to see these from someone who uses a style close to that, only to give me something to work with.

Know that you know I'm not using your symbols directly as-is, but instead edited and modified, I ask you: please? Nobody has to see it, you can send it only to me (put it into www.imageshack.us and PM me the address)

P.S.: I'm thinking of putting "Capitalis" (the inscription font) into the upper-case of this font, and leaving the Uncialis to be the lower-case. I think that will make the font more complete. Also, I'll have to change that K uncialis.

Cyborg · Post by **Cyborg** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 4:32 am

Ok, the font is ready for distribution, the only problem being I don't have a place to make it available for downloading. If no one has any suggestions to this problem, I can send it attached by e-mail sent to me by PM.