[Biblical-languages] Text processing of Greek in a large batch of files

Kirk Lowery klowery at wts.edu
Thu Sep 4 15:37:13 EDT 2003


biblang at ntresources.com wrote:

  > But however WebCT processes and displays text, it forces the
  > browser to use a much smaller font than normal--and the user
  > (either teacher or student) cannot control this sizing. The result
  > is Greek text that is too small to be legible on screen. E.g., the
  > difference between an omicron and a (medial) sigma is *one pixel*!
  > That is not good, especially for beginning students.

I'm not an expert when it comes to IE, but using the Mozilla/Netscape
browser, one can force the browser to render the fonts according to
the user's settings rather than the document settings.

Might this be a (practical) solution with minimal hassle?

  > One possible solution is to specify the size using the <font size =
  >  "x"> tag (or a <big> tag). But that means manually changing well
  > over 1,000 text files.

No! No! Don't do it manually! That's why God created the programs awk
and sed! :-) Seriously, such a change should (ought to) be trivial to do.

  > Open the first file
  > find the string: <font face = "Galilee"> and
  > then replace it with <font face = "Galilee" size = "3">
  > Save the file, close it, then open the next file and repeat.

It would look something like this for one file (untested):

sed -e 's/\"Galilee\"/& size = \"3\"/' oldfile.html > newfile.html

and then a batch file with find and xargs to handle all the files.

We do something very much like this every working day, here. If you
know no one who has the expertise, email me direct.

....

Just saw Matthew's posting. I strongly agree with him that you should 
consider CSS for the long-term solution.

And, yes, there are a number of short-term solutions, of which his is 
just as good as the one I suggest above.

Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D.
Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute
Adjunct Professor of Old Testament
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia

Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt.
Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum.
Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint:
nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!




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