OVER 2 YOU 201 (12/10/04)

FRAKTUR FONT

I am interested in German history and many documents and books published pre-1945 are in what is called Fraktur (sometimes described loosely as German Gothic) I have used Read-Iris 8 to scan and convert text, but whilst it works with modern German it cannot deal with Fraktur. Does anyone know of an OCR that can do the job?

Also, I would like to know where I could find a downloadable set of fonts so that I can type in Fraktur. Presently, the nearest option in the XP Professional suite is Old English Text, though there is no font that equates to the old German "f"-like letter "s", nor the "SZ" which has to be shown as SS or by inserting ß, but this "SZ" is a modern version of the dopple-S.

Graham Rumney

Any German font will have the double-s "SZ" sign, but it is also important to make sure the font he chooses has both the long and the round single "s" as these have different functions. Some German display fonts used in advertising seem not to have a round "s" (or else users find it too much bother to find), and to put a long "s" at the end of a word or word-element is a solecism. I recommend he goes to: www.fontsarea.de/fontsfrakt.htm, where he will find at least three suitable downloadable fonts: Becker Fraktur, DS-Normalfraktur or Schwaben Alt. Theses provide both types of "s" (the long one is obtained by hitting the "s" key, the round one via the Insert > Symbols in Word. If he is using an English keyboard with no SZ key that sign can also be obtained via the Symbols window. Keyboard shortcuts can be set up for both, of course.

Michael Scuffil, via email

MyFonts.com lists a very large number of downloadable Fraktur fonts (Walbaum Fraktur T is an attractive one) from about twenty dollars.  For OCR programmes go to Yahoo.de and type in ' Fraktur OCR ' in the search box. There appears to be some very recently produced software that is claimed to be extremely accurate, but it may not be cheap. www.ligaturix.de interestingly describes software (freeware?) that turns Roman into Fraktur.

G. T. Hughes, via email

Try the Luftwaffe font, downloadable from www.webpagepublicity.com/free-fonts-l3.html#Free%20Fonts

Peter Cleeve, Hove

ABBYY FineReader 7.0 Pro can be reprogrammed and makes a fair attempt at Fraktur. It does sometimes have problems with ii = ü and rr = m and the like, but its not bad.

Bernadette Rogers, via email

Graham Rumney can find the Fraktur Font (bold and normal) within the 1500 fonts contained in Corel’s Mega Gallery clip art collection.  It was only about  £50 to buy and with the many thousands of clip art images it represents quite a bargain!

Steve Matthews, via email

I can’t help with information on 'trasliterators', but suggest Mr Rumney should try www.waldenfont.com. On the home page go to Fonts then Gutenberg Press. There are a number of Fracturschrift fonts and some of cursive writing, which is even more difficult to read than print—not many Germans under 50 can read it fluently. Those taking the old School Certificate in German at first or Higher level up to the end of WW2 learned it in Fractur, which was used extensively in English textbooks. Hands up those who remember 'Heute Arbend'

Eddie van der Straeten, via email

There is a nice, free Fraktur TrueType font with the program Ligaturix, downloadable at: www.winload.de/download/32688/

Grafik,Desktop/Schrift/Ligaturix-3.2.2.html

Tony Stone, via email

The "Fraktur" font was included in CorelDraw V8. Corel also calls it Frankenstein

David Banham

I have the Fraktur font on a floppy disk in Mac format Type 1. Oddly enough, as far as I can remember it does not have a long s, unless it is hidden somehow. It's from the Bitstream Typeface library with the following references: 24656/1/BTL8861014   Fraktur 0983 Regular

Nigel Belchamber

PSION OF THE TIMES

Having recently adopted an HP iPAQ 2210 to replace my old faithful Psion Series 3, I sorely miss the wonderful Psion tape style calculator into which it was so easy to enter the values and to then scroll through and amend the figures as required. Does anyone know of any software that will help me?

John Kent, via email

Have a look at TapCalc, it is shareware, the full version costs $8 and can be downloaded from:

www.download.com/tApCalc-Desk-tape-calculator

-Pocket-PC-ARM-/3000-2156-10155050.html

Dick Parsons, via email

TapeCalc from JB Software does a fair impression of a traditional calculator with a tape display. There’s a detailed description and a link to the download at: www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=13217

Ben Davies, via email

STOCK MONITOR

I monitor a list of stocks by importing streaming prices into an Excel spreadsheet. In order to analyse the price action, I would like to have a column that automatically displays the highest or lowest value that the price for each stock has reached since being included in my spreadsheet.  In a way the cell must therefore have a "memory", and only change what it displays, if a higher/lower value is achieved.  Can anyone tell me if that is possible? 

Karl von Furstenberg, via email

To display the Highest value of a share price in cell A10, enter =MAX(A10,B10) in cell B10.  A similar expression using MIN will always show Zero if A10 is always Greater than zero. To overcome this problem an IF statement is required.  Enter =IF(C10=0,A10,MIN(A10,C10)) in cell C10. When cell A10 is changed B10 will show the Maximum and C10 will show the Minimum values obtained by A10.

Arthur Uphill, via email

CAN YOU HELP?

I understand that it is possible to superimpose a permanent "watermark" into digital image files in such a way that even if the image is re-sized or cropped the mark is retained and cannot be readily removed. My son, who is just beginning to sell a few of his photographs to publications, would like to embed a discrete copyright/name/date mark onto his portfolio images. Can anyone suggest a method or suitable program for doing this?

Derek Nash, via email

Does anyone know of a simple parts stock control program to replace our ageing Spiral Solutions Stockman software based on a Borland database program that only works with Win 9x after a lot of fiddling? We are moving to an XP computer and are looking for something simple to just tell us what we have, what it cost and what to reorder.

Peter Todd, Basingstoke