Irish_test.pdf and Irish_test_italic.pdf sources?

[hanetzer]

Just for example's sake. I'm typesetting an old public domain book which features quite a lot of old anglo saxon words
and I'm looking for a 'clean' way to handle such large blocks of text.

[psb1558]

First of all I should mention that it's not really necessary to typeset Old English and Irish in insular letters. Old English scholars largely gave that custom up in the 1830s, and now one needs a particular reason to use insular letters (e.g. when you're actually writing about those letters). Irish was set in insular letters much later, but now it seems relatively uncommon.

That said, if you want to set in older letters, Junicode is there for you. For either Old English or Irish, make sure the language is set properly and turn on ss02. The rules are somewhat different for the two languages, but those differences are accounted for in Junicode's programming. Irish:

Old English:

As for where to get samples of these languages, Wikisource has (if I recall correctly) a number of Irish texts. For Old English, there are lots of texts all over the internet, including at my instructional website, Old English Aerobics.

[hanetzer]

First of all I should mention that it's not really necessary to typeset Old English and Irish in insular letters. Old English scholars largely gave that custom up in the 1830s, and now one needs a particular reason to use insular letters (e.g. when you're actually writing about those letters). Irish was set in insular letters much later, but now it seems relatively uncommon.

In this case I do need them, as my intent is to, as close as possible (even though I think they may be using the wrong form of insular s in a few case), replicate the exact contents of the book.

I ended up figuring it out reading the source for the manual.

As for where to get samples of these languages, Wikisource has (if I recall correctly) a number of Irish texts. For Old English, there are lots of texts all over the internet, including at my instructional website, Old English Aerobics.

Ah that's nice, good to have some more sources to help piece together some of the more garbled text.

[hanetzer]

On the subject of resources, do you know of a 'rulebook' for how/when/why insular letters change shape?
As in, when an s looks like an f or an r with a tail?

[psb1558]

I don't know much about Irish practice, but in Old English and Latin manuscripts of the same period, there are very few rules. Scribes vary long s (U+017F) and insular s (U+A785) pretty freely (round s, the most common modern shape, is rare). There seems to be a pretty widespread rule that insular s is avoided before insular t (U+A787), as those two letters together make an awkward amount of white space.

In writing thorn and eth (letters with equivalent value), some scribes write (almost) exclusively one or the other, while others prefer thorn initially and eth elsewhere, but many follow no particular rule, or perhaps some idiosyncratic rule.

For scribes using r rotunda (U+A75B), there is a rule followed (as far as I can tell) universally: r rotunda follows letters b, o, p (letters rounded on the right), but regular r is used elsewhere.

Compared to more modern usage (e.g. in early printed books), manuscript style seems chaotic. There are rules, but they are usually variable. You can find out more about manuscript practice from one of the standard textbooks, e.g. R. Clemens and T. Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies, or B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography.