We had a discussion in the SII and the consensus was that we should object to:
- any change or addition related to Hebrew that would invalidate existing Unicode data or require its modification or re-examination - any change or addition to Unicode that would make the use of Hebrew more complicated or confuse the common user - any change or addition to Unicode that would require a user of Hebrew to have a higher level of knowledge, e.g. to distinguish between items not commonly distinguished, for example the two meanings of Vav with Holam. - the suggestion to encode Biblical Hebrew separately is unacceptable. The requirements of professional and knowledgeable users, such as Biblical scholars, should not be allowed to impose upon everyday users who are not blessed with such a profound knowledge and understanding. Consequently, it was suggested that the several issues with Biblical Hebrew recently mentioned, and several more which were not, should be solved by means of markup, outside the scope of Unicode. This is how they have been addressed in many of the references given. This is our recommendation. Failing that, it was suggested that an existing Unicode character, such as ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE, be used for "invisible" Hebrew letters, in cases such as Yerushala(y)im. The third, and least favored, option is to add a special Unicode character to represent missing base characters such as the Yod in Yerushala(y)im. Jony
