[b-hebrew] Babylonian pointing

Yitzhak Sapir yitzhaksapir at gmail.com
Wed Sep 14 05:56:00 EDT 2005


On 9/14/05, Peter Kirk  wrote:

> The most convincing of a number of reasons why the different pointing
> systems need separate Unicode code points is that each combining 
> mark is associated with a particular position relative to the base 
> character, and the system would get very confused if the position of the 
> mark changed with a font change. Also there are texts with both sets of
> pointing, I understand.

There are also many texts with two fonts.  Just because "Rashi" script 
appears as a script for many commentaries of the Torah and Talmud side
by side with Hebrew script, and in some cases is used as a method of
sorts to highlight a phrase (much like small caps would be used to, say,
denote a keyword in a software language book), so too, there is no
reason for multiple Rashi and Hebrew scripts.  It is one script with two
fonts and both fonts can be used in the very same text, even in the very
same sentence.

I am not sure about confusing the system, but I think it is an attribute of
the font.  That is, the font has to describe for the system how to put 
together an Alef, a Hataf Patah, and a Tipha, but it changes between
different fonts as to how to handle the combination, because different
fonts have different sizes and different considerations for all this.  So I
really doubt that is a consideration.

What I think leads to the conclusion that they should be separate is
that the vowel marks are really different.  It's not just a different version
of "patah".  It's a different vowel that overlaps some of the Tiberian
patah and does not overlap others.  So it really is a very distinct
symbol.  And having concluded that, it becomes reasonable to suppose
that at least other vowel markings, but probably also cantillation marks,
(even though the cantillation marks might be considered just a subset
of the Tiberian one) should be considered as a separate group in their 
entirety.

Yitzhak Sapir



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