Template talk:Insular

Function & Application

Can anyone explain how this template works, and how it can be applied to other fonts? ----Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

The template is selecting and printing SVG images from Commons (from Commons:Category:Insular script). It has multiple subpages and calls to other templates, but I think all you would really need to change is the Template:Insular/file subpage (or equivalent in your new template). If you had another set of character images, a quick and dirty way to adapt the template would be to just change the filename in the subpage (the calls to the subpages, and maybe the list of characters, would need updating too). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Still needed

To be useful for Irish, this still needs capital letters as well as ṡ. To be useful for Old English, it needs ý, æ, and ǽ. For Irish it would be nice to also have ɼ, ſ, and ẛ. I don't know of any particular need for ṙ, but since it's already here, there's no reason to get rid of it either. Angr 11:07, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, it needs punctuation too! And the punctuation should include the Tironian et, ⁊. Angr 11:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I can see that I missed some things, not being really familiar with Gaelic Irish. I just grabbed the letters from File:Evolution of minuscule.svg (and added diacritics where necessary). If someone could point me toward a good open source font or image(s) of all necessary glyphs for Gaelic and/or Old English, I could start setting this template up to be more faithful to actual usage. --Eliyak T·C 00:22, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't know of any. Irish and Old English would really require separate letter shapes in many cases anyway. File:Beowulf.firstpage.jpeg and File:Peterborough.Chronicle.firstpagetrimmed.jpg show how the insular script was used for Old English (looking at that reminds me that Old English needs þ and ð as well); [1] (and the rest of that file) shows how the Gaelic script was used for Irish. They're similar but not identical--note especially the different shapes of "a", though perhaps they could be unified by using either ᴀ (U+1D00) for the Irish "a" or ɑ (U+0251) for the Old English "a". Angr 00:50, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I have located a freely licensed — but not Commons-compliant — font. It's quite beautiful and seems to match perfectly. I have sent the creator a request to let us use svg images of the letters. Let's keep our fingers crossed. --Eliyak T·C 04:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The shapes of individual letters aren't copyrightable anyway, are they? Angr 14:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently fonts are copyrightable. Anyway they usually have licenses attached. I'd rather not risk the images being deleted. --Eliyak T·C 15:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Good news - permission granted. I will start converting the letters to svg. --Eliyak T·C 20:46, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Things are coming together at {{Gaelic}}. Not fully functional yet, but getting there. --Eliyak T·C 00:49, 16 January 2012 (UTC)