Automated Font Generation
Bronson Brown-deVost · 2022
Bronson Brown-deVostThe Scripta Qumranica Electronica project provides a web-based platform for exploring the Dead Sea Scrolls and creating critical digital editions of them.1Among the many features this online virtual research environment provides is the ability to mark the region outline of letters on an image of a manuscript.This is accomplished by recording the exact vector coordinates -a series of x,y points -that encompass the ink of individual letters on the manuscript and linking it with its corresponding letter in a digital transcription of the text.The isolation of each letter and its linkage to a transcription is currently done manually within the platform, but automation of the process is underway.2This linked data provides a large paleographical repository of information about extant letter forms and their relative placement which can be used to answer many different questions related to scribal habits and fragmentary manuscript remains.Relevant to the present book, this information can be used to automatically generate fonts matching the scribal practice in individual manuscripts.The shape of a given letter that will be used to present it in the automated font is called "a glyph."The automated process to produce such fonts involves analytical routines to determine typical values for: 1) glyph shape, 2) glyph size, 3) vertical glyph positioning, 4) kerning of glyphs, 5) word spacing, and 6) line spacing.All of these script features are subject to variation throughout the course of a manuscript, but a model font will aim toward a representation of the average and the prototypical.