More thoughts on transcription of documents in odd fonts

What I've done so far, is transcribe directly to a modern font. I just realized, while trying to make out the letters in a German Blackletter volume, that what you should really do is this: go through your font library to find the font that most closely matches the font you are transcribing from, and use that for your first transcription. If the fonts are a good match, you will be able to tell by comparing your transcription to the original document whether you have correctly identified each letter, because if you haven't they won't look the same.

For this, you need an easy way to look at all of your fonts. Doesn't come with Wndows. But, there is a software solution. High Logic produces a couple of font related programs. The one you want to get is called MainType. MainType only has one download, so that's the one you want. There are three license levels available for the MainType software: 1) Free, which limits the number of fonts that you can have it manage to 2500, 2) Standard, which ups the number of fonts to 10000, and 3) Professional, which has no limits on the total number of fonts, but will only display 50000 fonts at a time; if you have more than that, organize them into families, and assign tags, and you can then pull up just the ones you want to look at. There are some other nice things that the standard and professional licenses provide, but nothing that you need at this time, so when you start the program, always select Free version; it will ask you every time you start the program, but hey, they are trying to sell this software to make a living. They really aren't asking much for the standard and professional versions. If you have that many fonts you are doing this professionally.

MainType will merrily go through and index all of the fonts on your computer. If any have been corrupted, it will let you know, and offer to fix the situation; to do that, you would need the Professional licence. Not needed. It will list the fonts that have gone bad, and what you need to do is bring up your favorite file search utility (I use Everything, available from void tools; it's free, and does a very good job of locating files on your computer.), and enter the file name of the affected font(s); not the name of the font, but the name of the file, which will be at the far right of the info on bad fonts. Once you have located the font file, delete it. Do this with all the corrupt font files. You might think you can avoid searching for them this way, since they generally reside in the Windows Fonts directory, but you will find that if you use file explore to go to that directory, it brings up Windows font manager, which will only display active fonts; the font files you are looking for are not active, because they have been corrupted. The Windows Font Manager just will not show you any files in that directory except active fonts, and you can't bypase it when accessing that directory with file explorer. So you have to use an alternative file search utility, and delete from it's listing of files. Anyway, once that is done, MainType will not bother you about them again. After MainType finishes indexing all your files, it will list them in alphabetical order in a scrollable list, with the font name written in its font. Select a font by clicking on it. On the right of the MainType main window there is a window which shows all the characters suppoerted by that font, arranged in Unicode order inside Unicode groups. You can scroll down this display, and see what the characters are that are supported by the font, and what they look like. Using this display, you can go through the fonts installed on your computer and see which is the closest match to the font used in the document you are considering transcribing. If none of them seem close enough, time to go on a font hunt online. Now that I know about it, the first place I'd start is with Typewolf's site. Typewolf is into fonts, big time. He does it for a living. His site has reviews of an incredible number of fonts, and many recommendations for free fonts if you cannot afford, or don't need, the commercial fonts. he also has a lot to say about the various font sites, which are worth your time, and which aren't. So I'd start there when looking for a new font. I'll assume that, working with his advice, you succeed in tracking down an acceptable font in regard to matching the font used on your document.

Now do your transcription, using that font. I know, the end goal is to have the text in something easier to read. That's the end goal, right now your goal is to be certain you have chosen the correct character to match that in the original document. When you are all done with the transcription, and have gone through the verification process to insure that you have, indeed, chosen the correct character in each case, then and only then, but wait, first save your document, and open a copy of it; you don't want to lose your hard work (this should become instinctive after a while). Once you have opened the copy, select all the text, and apply the font you want to have the document in; well, first verify, using MainType, that it supports all the characters needed for your document. There. Done. You have your transcribed document in an easy to read modern font. Save the document; this is the basis for all of your future text manipulations.

Now you can proceed in the process described in my previous post.

Post this Puppy!

Edit: 2017 10 12: Removed lengthy description of how to create a master sheet of font characters, replacing it with how to get MainType, and why. Added info on Typewolf.