Reasons for multiple fonts

At #Wikimania I spoke with people who conserve old texts. We spoke about the fact that the shape of characters has changed over time. This is also true for for instance Hebrew.

When a website provides webfonts, it is possible to show a text that has been transcribed in a font that uses the same shape for the characters as used in for instance a manuscript. This in turn will make the experience of reading a historic text just a little more authentic.

The drawback of old text with differently shaped characters? You can not scan them and consequently the process of optical character reading is problematic as well. This does not mean that it cannot be transcribed, it is just more work.
Thanks,
      GerardM