Unifraktur Maguntia is a digitalisation of the 1901 typeface Bertholdr Mainzer Fraktur by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt. While the first versions of this font were based on a digitalisation by
Peter Wiegel, with the main differences:
OpenType for font’s ligatures & variants.
Suitable for @font-face embedding on web.
Permiſſive license OFL that explicitly allows font embedding.
All glyphs has carefully redrawn and the font was significantly expanded.
This font has been edited with FontForge ‹Z, the free
outline font editor.
All the characters variants are usable with the CSS properties font-feature-settings
Glyph Coverage
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Œ œ Æ æ ff ß . , ; : - ? ! ( ) [ ] { } —
§ † ‡ ' ‘’ ¶ & » « • ✥ * ° % μ € $ ¢ £ ¥ @ & ç ^ ´ ̃ ˙ ͤ
What Died Out
Old Umlauts
Today’s umlaut dots originate from a small ‹e› that was placed above the respective
basic letter up to the 19th century (‹›). Capital umlauts, emerged only
at the beginning of the 20th century. Before, the basic ‹capital letter plus e› was used, there are only few examples of a small ‹e› over a capital letter. "cv15" Üöä →
The long S ‹ſ› "cv11""ss11"
beforeafter
a c t
e i o u y ä ö ü p and other lowercase vowels
k r
b d f g h j l m n q v w x z ß . ’
and other lowercase consonants
ſ s
other
g
ſ
s
s
s
s
s
vowels except u
ſ
ſ
s
s
ſ
s
b d f h k l r ſ t u
ſ
ſ
s
s
s
s
c j m n p q v w
ſ
ſ
ſ
s
s
s
other
ſ
ſ
ſ
ſ
ſ
s
While the swash of the round ‹s› hardly poses a problem in texts using the long ‹ſ›
(as the ‹s› mostly occurs at the end of words), it one may regard it
as diminishing readability and aesthetics in texts without it.
"cv20" sos → sos
Before Fraktur
i–j merger
Until the early 20th century, there was no distinction between the
capital letters ‹i› and ‹j›
and both were written as ‹j›. "cv13" IJ → JJ
In some early fraktur texts, ‹j› was used at the beginning of a word for both,
while everywhere else ‹i› was used for both. "ss03" iji → jii
u–v merger
Today’s distinction between ‹u› and ‹v› emerged in the 17th century.
Until then, ‹v› was used for both, ‹u› and ‹v› at the beginning of words, while ‹u› was used elsewhere.
As a capital letter, ‹V› was used for both. "ss02" Uu Vv → Vv Vv
round r
In early fraktur texts, ‹ꝛ› replaced the regular ‹r› after certain letters that where round to
the right (B, D, G, O, P, b, d, h, o, p) and after ‹r› (there are counterexamples) "cv12" r → ꝛ
It was also used in the abbreviation “etc.” "hlig" etc. → ꝛc. This usage
originated from ‹ꝛ›’s similarity to the “tironian et” ‹⁊› and survived until 1900 and hence, ironically,
the ‹ꝛ› in its original use.
Modern variants
Another difficulty of fraktur for today’s readers are letters whose fraktur form is
unfamiliar or can be confused with another letter.
experimental variants used here"cv29" -→-"cv30" d→d"cv31" v→v"cv32" m→m, m"cv33" T→T"cv34" "cv35" "cv36" "cv37" "cv38" f f→f f
luCtlnse
Fraktur Letterſpacing
In proper fraktur typography, the markup for emphatic text is not “italic ” or “bold”, but
“letterſpacing”.
There is a catch to fraktur letterſpacing: the ligatures ‹ch›, ‹ck›, ‹ſt›, ‹tz› are treated as ſingle
letters with regard to letterſpacing.
↑ This image is really a ſcreenſhot from Firefox (since the release of 4.0, it is capable of correct
fraktur letterſpacing).
ſitzen – ſitzen
↑ Test for web browser: this text ſhould really look exactly like the above image (except for
differences in font raſterization)
In OpenType, the required ligatures that do not get letterſpacing have to be defined in the feature "ccmp" (“Glyph Compoſition/Decompoſition”), while the other ligatures that do get
letterſpacing have to be defined in the feature "liga" (“Standard Ligatures”). Both
features ought to be activated by default in all ſcripts.
The goal of the UniFraktur project is providing free resources to blackletter font developers can add smart
features to their fonts. It focuses eſpecially on covering a wide range of smart font technologies. Since
there is no single standard for smart font technologies, compability will benefit when a font includes
different technologies.
Blackletter fonts may seem outdated or even reactionary. That’s precisely why I find a tongue-in-cheek
pleasure at combining them with the most advanced smart font technologies available.
Don’t leave blackletter to the
outdated and reactionary people reappropriate it!
