The woes of scholarship

[fpb]

Aie aie aie. Woe oh woe.

Having to read very large books.
Having to read very large books in German.
Having to read very large books in German and printed in Gothic script.

Comments

[redcoast]

The worst!

[filialucis]

If it's any comfort, you do get used to it.

Yes, Fraktur is a nightmare of illegibility, especially when dealing with facsimile reprints of old stuff, and I have serious doubts about its aesthetics. But I've read my way through Johann Joachim Quantz from start to finish, and by the end I was barely noticing the typeface any more.

What gets my goat, though, is when they switch to Latin script for Latin-derived words. What gets my goat even worse is when they switch typefaces in mid-word, putting the Latin root of the word in Latin type and the German ending in Fraktur. Batshit crazy, I tell you. :)

May I ask what Very Large Books you're reading there? I'm sort of assuming, though of course it's never safe to be too sure, that it isn't the primer on how to play the transverse flute. :)

[fpb]

Mommsen on the administrative role of ancient Roman tribes. As you say, it is a facsimile reprint available on Google. The trouble is that, at best, German is not my friend as much as, say, French.

[filialucis]

Ouch.

You might get lucky and find a modern reprint, though. I have an eight-volume paperback edition of Römische Geschichte sitting on my shelf courtesy of DTV; maybe your thing has been republished in a sensible typeface too? In which case a library near you might have it.

[fpb]

It looks as if the issue has been solved for me anyway - Google is refusing to download the damn thing, in spite of five successive attempts.

[norwyn]

Now that it is downloaded, you can highlight and change the font? Just asking, I've never done an e-book before...something about them just doesn't seem right. But I am thankful for the technology that allows us to have access to so much text that would otherwise be out of reach.

Have a great day working, and take a break now and then to rest from the eyestrain.

[fpb]

I know how to highlight in PDF format, which is what this is - thanks to curia_regis - but not how to change the font; and if I did, I would not dare. Before I tried to download the old Fraktur (Gothic) text, I had a look at the transcribed "plain" text on offer, and was horrified. Pages upon pages of pure gibberish. It seems that the combination of unusual script and German language had had a baleful effect on revisers or spell-checkers.

[filialucis]

I very much doubt you could change the font even if it were possible in apps like Acrobat Reader. You can only highlight text in a PDF at all if it was entered AS text, and Google book scans consist of images. Short of actually performing OCR on a Google PDF, what you have is nothing any computer application would see as text.

[fpb]

Yes, and if you performed OCR you would need careful proofreading. Like I said, you would not believe what gibberish turned up on the page when I tried to download the so-called plain text version.

[lyssiae]

You're making me jealous :D

[fpb]

If you really are that keen on reading old scholarly books printed in Fraktur, there are hundreds available for download at Google Books.

[curia_regis]

At least it should be visually pleasing? I mean, I think Gothic script is pretty. I really can't remember the last time I looked at it!

Visually pleasing?

[fpb]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Jt02AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Mommsen+inauthor:Mommsen&lr=&as_brr=0#PPP4,M1

Re: Visually pleasing?

[curia_regis]

Well I do think the lettering looks pretty...

Re: Visually pleasing?

[fpb]

I guess it's a matter of taste. And also of not associating a certain style with military brutality, secret police and death camps. But even if that were not the case, I would still say that Roman looks more elegant and uncluttered. A curious piece of history: it was the Nazis who, in 1937, ordered the transition from Fraktur to Roman, after a nationwide study had proved that Roman was faster to read and easier to understand even for native Germans.