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« on: June 30, 2017, 04:59:07 PM »
It very much depends on the style, but it would be uncommon for the majuscule height to exceed that of a letter with an ascender. The whole business of litterae notabiliores for Gothic hands is murky, because until the late medieval period they were more than likely versals - which is always an option of course. From 1400 on, say, writing masters were producing majuscule alphabets but there wasn't anything worth speaking of in the way of standardisation, which leaves you free to plunder whatever roughly contemporaneous manuscripts take your fancy for eyecatching forms. Or at least, that's the way I see it.
Instead of thinking in terms of x-heights, you might like to consider it a bit differently. It was common for "blackletter" to be written between rather than on lines, spaced so as to give room for ascenders and descenders, plus a bit of leeway. The advantage of using this approach from the modern perspective is that you get a bit of life in the base and waistlines, and you can play around with the ascenders, descenders and capitals according to taste as opportunities present themselves. (From the medieval point of view it's quicker). This is more suitable for cursive forms than textura precissa or whatever, but getting away from that running on rails look is desirable and historically appropriate.
So much for the book hands of the middle ages, but there are also two other groups of styles which are commonly referred to as black letter. Firstly the 18th and 19th century confections found in copybooks under names like "Old English", "Church Text" or "German Text" - these you may as well reproduce as accurately as possible with a minimum of brio because they're engrossing hands for embellishing rather than practical writing styles. The second group is not my area at all, and I hesitate to tread there, but it includes Germanic print styles like Fraktur and Schwabacher, and you could also include typefaces designed by people like Hermann Zapf and Rudolf Koch. Fraktur is very popular with people working in the "calligraffiti" idiom, and if that appeals there really aren't too many rules as far as I can see and you can cut loose. To be historically accurate, however, you should probably measure your exemplar as accurately as possible, rule four lines and stick to them as tightly as you can.
Attached is a late 15th century example, which I think demonstrates quite nicely the advantage of using the between the lines approach.