10 Jul 2019: Found css4.pub which opens up massive possibilities for this project. Would like to try three experiments here:
- Chirologia, by John Bulwer, 1644 and convert to PDF for print
- JSB Dictionary of Action… and convert to PDF for print.
- LDS GC talks > format html and convert to PDF for print.
- Lead to HTML articles for interpreting class that can be made into PDF for print.
css4.pub apparently runs on Prince https://www.princexml.com/ which may or may not be helpful and/or too indepth.
What typographic adjustment libraries would be helpful here?
- https://css4.pub/
- https://github.com/rikschennink/fitty
- https://medium.com/type-thursday/use-javascript-libraries-for-typography-on-the-web-303704fbedba
- https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/courses/essential-js-libraries-for-web-typography
- http://letteringjs.com
- https://www.quertime.com/article/30-web-typography-tools-frameworks-and-libraries
- https://bashooka.com/coding/javascript-css-libraries-for-typographic-web-design
This is intended to be a web typographic experiment on John Bulwer's 1644 Chirologia. It won't be comprehensive — it's much too long — and it won't be typographically perfect — while there are good typographic candidates in the
- IM Fell -- https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IM+Fell+English -- http://iginomarini.com/fell -- http://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts and
- bespoke font development spaces, -- https://www.orbitals.com/self/ligature/ligature.htm -- http://www.parsonjohn.org/18th%20century%20replica%20printing.pdf -- https://www.prepressure.com/printing/history/1700-1749
nothing looks like four-hundred-year-old typography.
(Check out this CSS property for justified text: http://www.css3.com/css-text-justify)
So, as of this writing, it will try to take advantage of layout, typographic, and, most importantly/frustratingly, letterform consistencies. I'll likely introduce color into the design as I try to replicate an original seventeenth-century work.
This work by Bulwer (in connection with Juan Pablo Bonet's 1620 renderings of manual alphabet handshapes [Reducción de las letras y arte para ensenar a hablar los neudos ("Summary of the letters and the art of teaching speech to the mute")]) is personal to me in my other work as a researcher of deaf studies and the visual representation of signed languages.
Homebase on archive.org for these materials: https://archive.org/details/gallaudetuniversity-deafrarematerials
Chirologia, by John Bulwer, 1644
- Bulwer, John (1644). Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand: composed of the speaking motions, and discoursing gestures thereof. London: Thomas Harper. https://archive.org/details/gu_chirologianat00gent
- text version http://downloads.it.ox.ac.uk/ota-public/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A30/A30105.html
Bonet
- Bonet, Juan Pablo (date?) "Simplification of the Letters of the Alphabet and Method of Teaching Deaf-Mutes to Speak", https://archive.org/details/simplificationof00juan
- https://archive.org/details/ReductionDeLasLetrasYArteParaEnsenarAhablarLosMudos
- handshape images of "Simplification" https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Reduction_de_las_letras_y_arte_para_ense%C3%B1ar_a_ablar_los_mudos_(1620)
- https://www.thefreelibrary.com/A+Silent+Minority+Deaf+Education+in+Spain+1550-1835-a054258717
- Plann, Susan (1997). A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain, 1550-1835. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft338nb1x6;brand=ucpress
- https://alchetron.com/Juan-Pablo-Bonet
Bede
- http://www.nabkal.de/beda/beda_01.html
- http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=1799
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/39119488_De_computo_uel_loquela_digitorum_Beda_y_el_computo_digital
- http://www.medieval-baltic.us/latinbede.pdf
- http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/bede-the-complete-works-of-venerable-bede-8-vols--7
- http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/CJ/23/8/De_Loquela_Digitorum*.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger-counting
- http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25664/25664-h/25664-h.htm
Recreation of Caslon's type sample: