About This is a genuine Bastarda, written at Prague in the year 1400, at the chancery of one Wenzlaw who was king of Bohemia and Roman king. His elixir of life was booze, his first occupation fighting off a brother who tried and retried to have him dethroned for insanity, his favourite pastime having people drowned in the Moldava, and his only claim at immortality causing thereby the death of a court clerk called John of Pomuk, who afterwards became renowned as a saint. However, it surely wasn’t Saint John Nepomuk who wrote the quite innocuous little document this font is based on. The font is called after the first two words of that document, saying — in German — “We Wenzlaw…”
I got my information on King Wenzlaw, a.k.a V clav, a.k.a Wenceslas, a.k.a Wenzel, from Radio Prague’s online Czech history, which was a rather amusing read. Was, indeed, for, it seems, those pages are gone now. I had to remove the link. What a pity.
There is no number sign in this font. In its place, you’ll find a long s. Equally, you’ll find an alternate d on the bar sign; and the right and left bracket keys contain a double p and an alternate v. Update 2007 has provided a ‘normal’ n on the underscore, and the long s sign in this font will show up as a double long s.
Update 2007 has, moreover, reduced the file size, by redesigning the composite glyphs, has tried to embellish the figures and the m, has corrected the Ldot/ldot, and has moved the brackets: the left one to the fi sign, the masculine ordinal indicator, and the ‘less than or equal to’ sign, the right one to the fl sign, the feminine ordinal indicator, and the ‘greater than or equal to’ sign.
Update 2010 has redesigned all of the composite glyphs (correcting the dcaron, Lcaron/lcaron, and tcaron), and enlarged the dashes.
Licensing
Commercial licensing is available at http://www.pia-frauss.de/imp/cu.htm
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