KF>> This is rather enjoyable, but I think maybe getting a bit silly, and I would really rather know whether there's any fundamental Masoretic rationale for encoding holem>waw any differently from waw-holem....
I think the question was asked earlier whether the holem comes before or after the waw in holem-waw. I have been told that there was no visible difference between holem-waw and waw followed by holem in the original texts. However, after checking Emanuel Tov's plate of the Leningrad codex (p.392), it is clear to me that holem is clearly on the right of the waw, yet not over the preceding consonant. This lends credence to those of us who are BHS fans and would like to see a visible difference between holem-waw and waw-holem. The most reasonable means of achieving this is to encode the holem before the waw when it is holem-waw. The font designers can choose how they render this and the users can pick their preference by picking the font. Or eventually by setting a user feature, if this is ever incorporated into major software. Let's not go backwards by unencoding holem-waw. Joan Wardell SIL
