At 01:40 PM 7/24/2003, Peter Kirk wrote:
These are display issues, not encoding issues,...
Not entirely. First I need to know what sequence of Unicode characters I should use to encode holam-waw and aleph with right holam. Garbage in, garbage out. Then I need to be sure that your sophisticated rendering system actually makes the required distinctions and is not confused by any rare cases.
In both these cases, the holam belongs to the preceding consonant, but is contextually shifted onto the following alef, vav or shin. I wasn't aware that this was in any doubt. ...
Well, I was in little doubt that this was the correct thing to do, but...
...So, for example the word for 'head' in Genesis 3:15 is encoded
resh + holam + zaqef qatan + alef + shin + shindot
This is indeed how it is encoded at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/ct/c0.htm and http://www.anastesontai.com/b-cantilee/en-cant.asp, and in the text provided for Paratext 6.
But you imply that holam vav should be encoded with the holam before the vav. I agree. But none of these three texts agree with us. They all three encode the word for "great" in Genesis 4:13 as:
gimel dagesh qamats dalet merkha vav holam lamed
The following word "my punishment" is encoded at http://www.anastesontai.com/b-cantilee/en-cant.asp and in Paratext 6 as:
ayin hataf-patah vav holam nun hiriq tipeha yod
i.e. holam-vav and vav with holam are encoded identically.
In an attempt to make a visual distinction between holam vav and vav with holam, Mechon Mamre inserts ZWJ between vav and holam, thus:
ayin hataf-patah vav ZWJ holam nun hiriq tipeha yod
So it seems that there is a considerable measure of doubt over just what to do! You imply that it is best practice to encode holam-vav as holam followed by vav, perhaps with an intervening cantillation, i.e. "great" would be:
gimel dagesh qamats dalet holam merkha vav lamed
If this is indeed best practice, that needs to be clearly agreed and clearly stated so that text providers know what they should be doing.
Both Ezra SIL and SBL Hebrew (the version which was temporarily on a website) with a released version of Uniscribe displays all of these combinations sensibly. Ezra SIL makes a clear graphical distinction between holam vav and vav holam, but SBL Hebrew does not.
John, I put all this in a table in a Word document, I'll send this to you offlist.
I'm looking into this. The substitution should result in a clear distinction, but there may be a problem in the lookups. I'll send you a PDF offlist once I have confirmed that it is working properly.
Regards, John
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
