Creating Documents in Fraktur

Creating Documents in Fraktur

The instructions below were written by a student in German 101 in Winter 2011. If you’d like to create a document in Fraktur (for fun – this is not something anyone will ever require you to do!), but you find the instructions too difficult to follow, just get a friend who is more comfortable with computers to help you – s/he should find these instructions simple and clear to follow.

The instructions tell you how to use a programming language called LaTeX (commonly used e.g. for typesetting Mathematical formulas) to generate texts in Fraktur. In order to use these instructions, you will need the file “yfonts.sty,” which you can find online at http://www.tug.org/texmf-dist/tex/latex/yfonts/yfonts.sty, or simply by searching for “yfonts.sty.” This file provides LaTeX with the font information for Fraktur and a few other old German fonts.

Click here for the instructions (which include various examples)

Click here to see the original source file used to write the above instructions. Note that the preamble in this source file includes a lot more lines than you will need in the preambles for your fraktur documents: the “\newcommand” lines are just needed for the Mathematical formulas included as background about LaTeX at the beginning of the instructions.