[Biblical-languages] Unicode proposals for apparatus symbols,
Biblical Hebrew
Peter_Constable at sil.org
Peter_Constable at sil.org
Thu Jun 26 13:28:02 EDT 2003
Peter Kirk wrote on 06/26/2003 10:55:32 AM:
> PK: In fact nikud are used mostly in biblical Hebrew and in other old
> religious texts in Hebrew (and Aramaic I guess), plus in some
> educational materials. So biblical usage is perhaps the majority. Indeed
> in practice the only texts which would be broken by a change to the
> combining classes would be biblical texts and quotations which will be
> broken far more comprehensively by these proposals - plus I suppose a
> few typos in modern texts. That makes the objection about the effect on
> index and information servers null and void - no correctly spelled text
> will be affected.
It is not that simple: it's not just existing data that needs to be
considered, but software implementations. A change in combining classes is
NOT going to happen, as much as those of us here would say it's obviously
the right thing to do purely in terms of sensible encoding (disregarding
impact on existing implementations).
> PK: For one thing they will need to be a lot more sure than I am now
> that this is the only hope. What about my alternative proposals?
Alternatives such as these can still be considered.
> Even
> so, I cannot see the biblical Hebrew community in Israel, which is a
> considerable proportion of the whole and regularly uses modern Hebrew as
> well, accepting any proposal which draws an artificial line between
> biblical and modern Hebrew.
I'd need to have direct input from such people before I'd be convinced one
way or the other.
> PK: OK, let's just deprecate the existing Hebrew nikud and meteg. That
> doesn't impact the huge majority of modern Hebrew texts which don't use
> them. It impacts basically only those using the existing nikud, which
> are broken anyway.
That would break existing implementations for modern hebrew, and I
strongly doubt it would be accepted.
- Peter
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Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
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