Typing Old English

Greetings

I am offering the following in help to any one else who would like to type in Old English.  

The simplest method I have found comes from

http://www.murphymethod.com/red3.html

There is an email link to Red (the author) where you can request his font file that includes all the Old English special characters as well as the full Latin set.  It also includes the vowel macrons and hard/soft sound g and c.  This is a TrueType font and I have installed successfully on MSWord (Windows XP) and on OpenOffice.Write (Linux).  For me, it was actually as simple as copying the font file to my system's font directory, opening the word processor and selecting the font.

The file is called Old English Bookhand.  If you would first like to check out if it is for you, I recommend

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm

which also has some other useful links.

At this point, I have not tried to implement on html, so I have no recommendation for display on web sites.

There are other methods, of course, including Unicode, Junicode and Alphabetum, which involves picking through the code tables for the proper character, adding the hex code to a keyboard config file, etc.

Since I have not yet done any web sites in Old English and given my own bias toward a more authentic script (and given how time saving it was), using Old English Bookhand gave me the immediate gratification of seeing my own words in Old English on the screen.

Have fun!
kendall259