Re: Old English--style poetry

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 08:21:56 -0500, Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
wrote:

> On the subject of Unicode, when writing the Old English--style poetry
> with
> the gap in the middle of the line, do you use an em-space, some other
> Unicode thing, or layout? Also, why's it there?
When I was toying with conlang translations of Beowulf (failed dismally as
soon as it started getting difficult), I used a TAB character in the source
text.

In my translations, I used PIE poetic meter, i.e. roughly "xu-x xuu -u-x",
which fitted the first couple of lines damned well (except I had to take
Hw&t! and make it a quasi-line of it's own (Lhus!)). After that it became
increasingly hard to stuff things in and maintain alliteration, all the
while making up new lexemes. If I had enough perseverence, I suspect it
could have become my magnum opus, but I'm just too much of a quitter ;-)





Paul