In the mid‑C19th, Latin script also finally emerged as the dominant script, partially thanks to the Haas Type Foundry, which published several typeface families featuring Czech let‑ terforms in 1840. The question of the transition to Latin script was debated in profession‑ al circles and beyond; even playwright and journalist Josef Kajetán Tyl, who also penned the lyrics to the Czech national anthem, joined the discussion. In his 1833 article titled “To the Maidens of Bohemia” Fig. 3 printed in Gindy a Nynj (Then and Now) magazine, he sounded the battle cry:
With a kind eye, do welcome the elegant Latin script! Nature, magnificently al‑ mighty, loves the round form in its fairest of works. Your faces, dear maidens, are round, your hands are round, all that is beautiful is also round. How could I send Fig. 3 The cover page of the 3rd issue of Gindy a Nynj (Then and Now) magazine from 1833 contains an article in which Josef Kajetán Tyl underlines the advantages of Latin script. Nevertheless, the very next issue goes back to Gothic script.
you anything but beautiful script? Boxy German blackletter seems like oak wheels wedged between you and me, hence keeping me from your grace. Yet still – oh, if only you should send word that by virtue of the round Latin script I have stolen into your heart, and you shall soon prefer to read nothing more than lines written in the elegant Latin script! (Tyl, 1833)
The limited availability of typefaces with Czech accents was a lingering problem even at the end of the C19th, as Typografia Fig. 4 magazine notes in 1890: “There is an enor‑ mous need especially for Czech accents in many typefaces, as some German foundries, on which the overwhelming majority of local printers rely, are sometimes reluctant to supply the much needed accented characters, particularly for certain special typefaces, on the pretext that they would simply lose money investing in new dies with accented Czech characters made for some specific typeface merely to satisfy a few negligible or‑ ders” (Stivín, 1890, p. 85).
As a result, printers occasionally took matters into their own hands and soldered the accents onto metal type sorts by hand. In spite of this, many foreign type foundries (such as J. G. Schelter & Giesecke in Leipzig, H. Berthold in Berlin and Oscar Laessig in Vienna) advertised typefaces featuring Czech accents in Czech professional journals, though their quality varied greatly.
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THE INSECTS PROJECT Problems of Diacritic Design for Central European Languages