On 03/25/2015 10:40 PM, Andrew Cunningham wrote:
Or is it a markup issue rather than something for plain text?
Maybe, but it doesn't really seem so. There's no such thing as plain text on paper (once it's printed it's arguably formatted somehow), but looking at all the examples it seems to be happening in contexts that are as plain-texty as you could wish for. Blocks of boring plain text, no italics or effects any more complex than justification, simple notes written all in one font with no formatting to speak of etc. For that matter, there's all the existing plain-text-encoded cases I mentioned, using actual QOF letters instead of HEHs in undeniably plain, electronic text. Maybe it would make more sense to encode such texts as they are written (using QOF codepoints, etc) and have the markup indicate that it's a HEH in disguise. But that doesn't gain us anything in terms of standardizing the spelling, so to speak, to have the same text/word represented with the same letters in different representations.
~mark
On 26 March 2015 at 13:30, Mark E. Shoulson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:So, not much in the way of discussion regarding the TETRAGRAMMATON issue I raised the other week. OK; someone'll eventually get to it I guess. Another thing I was thinking about, while toying with Hebrew fonts. Often, letters are substituted in _nomina sacra_ in order to avoid writing a holy name, much as the various symbols for the tetragrammaton are used. And indeed, sometimes they're used in that name too, as I mentioned, usages like ידוד or ידוה and so on. There's an example in the paper that shows אלדים instead of אלהים. Much more common today would be אלקים and in fact people frequently even pronounce it that way (when it refers to big-G God, in non-sacred contexts. But for little-g gods, the same word is pronounced without the avoidance, because it isn't holy. It's weird.) I wonder if it makes sense maybe to encode not a codepoint, but a variant sequence(s) to represent this sort of "defaced" or "altered" letter HEH. It's still a HEH, it just looks like another letter, right? (QOF or DALET or occasionally HET) That would keep some consistency to the spelling. On the other hand, the spelling with a QOF is already well entrenched in texts all over the internet. But maybe it isn't right. And what about the use of ה׳ or ד׳ for the tetragrammaton? Are they both HEHs, one "altered", or is one really a DALET? Any thoughts? (and seriously, what to do about all those tetragrammaton symbols?) ~mark _______________________________________________ Unicode mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode -- Andrew Cunningham Project Manager, Research and Development (Social and Digital Inclusion) Public Libraries and Community Engagement State Library of Victoria 328 Swanston Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Ph: +61-3-8664-7430 Mobile: 0459 806 589 Email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://www.openroad.net.au/ http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/
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