#Font subsets II

A request by Glanthor made on the Wikitech list was to support Junicode as a web font for historic texts. When you read about the Junicode font on sourceforge, you find that it supports 3250 characters in the "regular style". Its speciality is supporting medievalists in their work and it supports many scripts. It is a really big font.

Arguments to support Junicode:

• it is a freely licensed font
• it has a clearly defined use case

Arguments against the use of Junicode as a web font:

• it is really big
• it does not target one script
• it is only one font for a script

When you read the Wikipedia article on the Runic script, it becomes abundantly clear that the Runic script evolved over time. Not only does the shape of characters change, the number of characters used is different as well. This is perfectly normal and it argues against the use of a single font for a single script.

As Junicode is freely licensed, it is possible to break the font up in pieces and have a separate font to be used  for Runic and another for Gothic. When other fonts for Runic are available as well, we can show sources with a font that resembles the original best and provide a more familiar font for easy reading as well.

Thanks,

       GerardM