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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Transcribing old text, and long-esses
From: Nicolàs de Hilster
Date: 2009 Oct 18, 13:17 +0200
From: Nicolàs de Hilster
Date: 2009 Oct 18, 13:17 +0200
George Huxtable wrote: > To those unfamiliar with it, transcribing as an f gets in the way of > understanding such old text, and in my view those long-esses, when > transcribed into modern form, should always become an s, and never an f, > which the author certainly didn't intend. The problem particularly arises > when using optical character recognition (OCR) software, which will usually > lack any discrimination between a long-s and an f. > Alternatively one could transcribe the text using a 17th century typeface and export it as a pdf. 17th century typefaces are available for free on the internet and support the use of the long s which are then shown in an authentic way with a short cross-bar. The one I use regularly is made by Jeff Lee and can be found on his web site: http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/typograf.html I have attached an example pdf file with the quote George mentioned before. In it you will find the JSL Ancient typeface, but also the same in Arial. The latter immediately shows the downside of transcribing like this; the long s is replaced by the florin sign, making it difficult to do a text search in a pdf like this. Nicolàs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ NavList message boards: www.fer3.com/arc Or post by email to: NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList+@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---