Germanic Forum Fonts, Officially Supported by Skadi

[Thorburn]

We installed three additional fonts that are officially supported by Skadi Forum.


1. "Walbaum-Fraktur," a black letter font:

Important for this selection was

• that it supports all special characters within a visible character range (or you couldn't enter them in vBulletin),
• that the special characters of Germanic languages are supported (such as the Swedish "å" or the German "ß"; the only characters it doesn't seem to support are the Icelandic "ð" and "þ" but that's probably not a big issue on this forum, as little Icelandic is written and you can always use another font to display them),
• that the most important extended German black letter characters exist and can be easily entered, in particular the long "s"),
• that the functionality of other frequently used characters is not severely impaired by the replacement,
• that the key "s" produces a round "s," as it is used all over the world, and not a long "s," as it is the case with many black letter fonts, and
• that it is optically attractive.

Walbaum-Fraktur fulfills these criteria and you can select the font in the editor.

The following keys produce frequently used special characters:

"#" = #
"<" = <
">" = >
"{" = {
"|" = |
"}" = }


2. "Germanic Runes," a runic font:

It represents the Elder Futhark, the oldest Futhark which is common Germanic heritage. It is also the "most complete" all-Germanic Futhark, containing 24 characters. The font also supports some additional characters.

Example:
ab defghijklmnop rstuvw z IJ NO T 12345
ab defghijklmnop rstuvw z IJ NO T 12345


3. "RUNenglish 2," a pseudo-runic font:

It supports both small and capital letters, as well as many additional characters.

Examples:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789
0123456789

If you want to use or display these fonts, you have to install them on your local machine. If you do not install them, a default font will be used to display them.

Refresh this page after installation to test if they were installed correctly.

Please be also reminded of one of our forum rules:

17. The abuse of block letters, fonts, colors, other text attributes, and smilies is not permitted. Abuse consists in using them for purposes other than occasional accentuation.

[Sciz]

These are nice Thorburn, thanks. Just out of curiosity, is there any possibility of the future inclusion of the Anglo-Frisian Futhorc, or do the officially supported fonts have to be common to germanic heritage as a whole?

[Thorburn]

Technically it wouldn't be an issue, but I fear that it would get out of control quickly, Sciz. If we add Anglo-Frisians runes, people would soon ask for Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, Vesterhavsöyene, Österled, Lönn and other runes, and naturally in different versions to reflect their development. The 33 rune Anglo-Saxon futhark could have been an alternative to the Elder Futhark (solely on the grounds of its richness in characters), but I still believe that the Elder Futhark is the most neutral and common.

Another big disadvantage is that a user has to have the fonts installed on his local machine in order to display them, and I suppose it will be difficult enough to encourage most regulars to install at least the current ones. Asking them to update their fonts frequently would be a bit too much demanded as well as detrimental to this purpose.

[Sciz]

Ah, indeed, I see your points. I was also thinking the Anglo-Frisian and Anglo-Saxon set were one and the same. A moot point, I suppose. Thanks for the clarification.

[Thorburn]

Ah, indeed, I see your points. I was also thinking the Anglo-Frisian and Anglo-Saxon set were one and the same. A moot point, I suppose. Thanks for the clarification.

These terms might be synonyms or maybe refer to different versions of this runeset or even both, depending on how they are used. Halas, I'm not a rune expert. I know that there are different versions of the Anglo-Saxon runeset, developing from the 5th century onward and having between 26 and 33 characters.

I'm sure somebody on the forum will know much more about it and be able to correct me if I state something inaccurate.