<text>Phraxtured-PlainPhraxtured-DeutschWhen printing first developed, the first typefaces attempted to replicate the hand-lettered look of medieval manuscripts. Most countries quickly moved away to a Roman look, except Germany, which kept the old hand-lettered look until the 20th century. Their standard style for books and newspapers was Fraktur, and many variants of it existed, just as many variants of the Roman alphabet exist. I learned to read Fraktur when I studied German in high school and college. However, I did not become interested in doing a version of it until I found some old German-language periodicals dating from the 1870s in a trash heap. Phraxtured is a fairly accurate rendition of the letter forms used in that publication. However, several characters in Fraktur, such as the k, y, x, and S, look bizarre to English-language readers, and I have created more comfortable alternatives. Fraktur also has two variants of the letter "s", which English also had until the nineteenth century. (I have included the old-style ΓÇ£sΓÇ¥ in many alphabets. It is usually where the integral sign is.)If you would like the original Fraktur characters, I have included an alternative version of Phraxtured, Phraxtured-Deutsch. Fraktur is hardly used at all today, and in Germany it is used only for decorative purposes. This is unfortunate, because it is a beautiful type style. This collection is unusually rich in Fraktur styles; Adobe offers only one version, a very bold version, Image Club offers a similar version, and Bitstream offers a lighter version. I cannot find any other offerings of Fraktur.</text>
