This is the first of a series of Gaelic fonts I hope to produce. It is based on
the Gaelic type which was common before roman character became more
common. In this font, aspirated consonants are created by typing option-<consonant> to get the dotted consonant. Thus, "H" is not needed in this font for aspiration. Accented lower-case vowels are created by typing option-e and then typing the vowel which is to be accented. This is consistent with the Apple standard. Upper case accented vowels are created like aspirated consonants (or capital consonants): by typing option-<upper case vowel>. I apologise for the inconsistency, but it was the only way include the aspirated upper- case consonants and the accepted upper- case vowels in the same font; option-eI, for instance, is the same as option-S.
I considered including only Irish/Scottish letters in this font, but I decided it would be best to include the larger set in case borrow words are used. I have no idea whether this would be appropriate for Welsh or Breton, but I know that those languages use letters which Gaelic does not, so that was a consideration as well. Of course, that meant that I had to make them up completely. Nevertheless, there are 26 letters in this font, not including aspirated and accented letters. Additionally, there are numbers and basic punctuation. I didn't feel anything else was necessary.
I didn't feel a bold and an italic version of this type made sense; some later Gaelic font famlies will probably have such versions though. If you feel that such variations should exist for this font, though, let me know.
I am open to comments and suggestions about this font... in fact, I encourage them. I think it contains all characters and punctuation needed, though, and I've tried to kern it well. If you have suggestions for different key assignments, I'd be interested in hearing those in particular. Any revisions will be automatically sent to these who have paid the shareware fee. The updates will be always be sent free to those to whom I can send the updates via e-mail; others will need to pay for the diskette outside of the first one.
You should have received in this stuffit archive the following: this file, Léigh Mise, Gaeilge.bmap (the screen bitmap), Gaeil (the postscript file), Gaeilge.AFM (metrics file... you probably don't need this, but just in case you do...) and sampla (sample of some text in Gaeilge font... this is in MacWrite II format ).
Please send US$10 to Chris Young, 200 South Millvale Ave. #301, Pittsburgh, Pa 15224 for the shareware fee. Gaeilge is Copyright 1991 by Chris Young. Proceeds will go to charity. Permission is granted (and encouraged) for distribution of this font, however all files noted above must be kept together and remain unaltered by anyone but me. You can also contact me at my internet address: cycy@ri.cmu.edu.
