[Biblical-languages] TECkit map files

Peter Kirk peterkirk at qaya.org
Fri Sep 12 04:26:43 EDT 2003


On 11/09/2003 19:18, biblang at ntresources.com wrote:

> I've just finished a first draft of a mapping file for my Galilee 
> font. I've posted a copy at the URL here for 
> comment/feedback/suggestions.
>
> http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/font/convert.htm 

This looks good! It needs testing of course. First it needs compiling - 
the form as it stands will not compile, surely.

A couple of points:

You have not included the characters in the basic Greek range 
(U+0370-U+03FF) which are not in the basic Greek alphabet, also the 
Greek diacritics (U+0342-U+0345) and maybe some other diacritics. (These 
may occur in NFC e.g. when following a space; many have spacing variants 
but they are not canonically equivalent.) You need to include any of 
these characters and combinations which can be represented in Galilee, 
although some (including all combinations with tonos as acute should be 
used rather than tonos) will be reverse mappings only as they have 
preferred alternatives already in your list. Well, strictly you can omit 
combinations which can never be in NFC as they will never be in your 
input for reverse mappings (as you set "RHSFlags (GeneratesNFC 
ExpectsNFC)"), but have you really worked out which of these 
combinations can never be in NFC? That would be rather complicated 
considering the complexity of the normalisation rules and the odd 
history re monotonic and polytonic Greek.

You would have had less work to do if you had started from NFD! Then you 
could have ignored all Unicode characters with canonical decompositions.

You write:

>Can't map U+1FBD coronis/contraction mark since it is not distinguished from non-backing smooth breathing mark in Galilee
>
As this is effectively identical to smooth breathing (though not 
canonically identical in Unicode), the best approach here is to do the 
reverse mapping only to a spacing smooth breathing or to space plus 
smooth breathing. Actually the Unicode spacing breathings and accents 
should have bidirectional mappings to spacing breathings or accents or 
to space plus the breathing or accent. In connected text your spacing 
variants should come only before capital letters and so should be 
converted by the longer mappings. But people may have used them in other 
circumstances e.g. lists of marks in a primer, in which this is the 
appropriate encoding.

You have an error, no "<>", in the line

>'V' greek_small_letter_final_sigma
>
Is this actually a capital letter in your font?

You need a middle dot (U+00B7) as this is the canonical equivalent of 
U+0387.

>
>
> I have a couple of specific questions for anyone who knows about this:
>
> 1. Should a semicolon character must be separately 'quoted' in a 
> string (else it is treated as a comment marker)? e.g.,
> 'a' ';' <>      U+1F70  ; alpha grave
> Or is this alternative OK since the semi falls within the quoted string?
> 'a;'    <>      U+1F70  ; alpha grave
>
> 2. Do any other characters need to be quoted in a similar fashion? /? 
> |? etc.?
>
> 3. What 'quoting' such characters, is a space: 
> required/prohibited/optional between other characters in the string? 
> (If the second alternative in #1 is OK, then this isn't relevant.) 

I'm almost sure that you can use a ; in a quoted string in this way with 
no problem. ; is recognised as a comment marker only outside quotes. The 
compiler will soon complain otherwise.

>
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> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> Rod Decker
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
>
>
>
Sorry this is all rather complicated! But you are getting there.

Peter

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/




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