Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Henry Churchyard" <churchh AT usa.net>]

> From: "John Richards" <jhr AT universalist.worldonline.co.uk>

> I have no experience with any other conversion system.  If there is
> a better one, it might be a good idea to let members of the list
> know about it.

I transformed a ca. 1989 copy of the CCAT BHS into a form appropriate
for my dissertation using the old command-line CONVBHS.COM program as
the first step, and then using a series of ad-hoc hand-written AWK
scripts.  I could send the final result to someone who requested it,
but it's heavily adjusted to my personal preferences and the
requirements of my dissertation (i.e. I transformed the transcription
system of the consonants and vowels to a more intuitive system, since
I had great difficulty in "thinking in" the official CCAT system; I
disambiguated between _waw-dagesh_ and _shuureq_; I added accents in
some cases where an accent was accidentally left off a word in the
manuscript, since it was essential for the automated accentual
analysis of the "21 books" in my dissertation that every un-maqqeph'ed
word in the _q@rey_ reading of the text of these books have an accent;
I changed the double numbers of the CCAT accent transcriptions to
single numbers reflecting Cohen's accent classes; I arranged the text
so that each basic accentual phrase was placed on a separate line,
with the word with the disjunctive accent at the end, and the whole
phrase surrounded by brackets which show the accentual parse structure
of the verse to which they belong; and I disambiguated certain cases
of disjunctive _l@garmeh_ vs. conjunctive _munah._ + _paseq_ using
external masoretic lists, for which my available sources actually
differed in one or two last frustrating cases, about which I forget
what I did -- maybe tossed a coin ;-) ).


>> you won't know whether the SIL software is buggy or not until you
>> apply it to a BHS text known not to be corrupt (and any text with
>> non-tildecode material on the same line following a tilde code,
>> such as you have described, is in fact corrupt).

> I did precisely that. I used for later trials the version you have
> put on your site.  As you say, it is far better formatted, and
> avoids the need to reformat the position of the tilde markers.
> However, it makes no difference to the end product using the SIL
> software.  Unless I went throught it at the last stage before the
> conversion to Right to Left, there were always approx. 50 lines
> indicated by the L2R process as being over 150 characters long, and
> resulting in a garbled line in the final text (words in the wrong
> order, or even omitted completely).

Maybe there is a bug then.  I wrote a quick Awk script that estimates
the length of each verse in the original unprocessed BHS e-text; here
are the hundred longest verses (if these verses show up among the
problematic ones, then the SIL software may have a bug, and if these
verses _don't_ show up among the problematic ones, then I would think
that it's even more likely that the SIL software has a bug -- unless
it's the first verse of each book or the last verse of each book which
is erroneous or something like that, in which case it would obviously
be an incompatibility between CCAT and OTA tildecodes which would be
causing the problem...)


 530 DANIEL 5:23
 519 ESTHER 8:9
 465 DANIEL 3:15
 456 ESTHER 3:12
 442 2 REGUM 6:32
 439 2 REGUM 16:15
 435 2 CHRONICA 22:11
 428 ESRA 3:8
 427 JEREMIA 21:7
 421 2 REGUM 1:6
 418 EZECHIEL 48:21
 414 DANIEL 7:7
 409 ESTHER 4:11
 409 DANIEL 5:7
 406 JEREMIA 35:15
 405 JOSUA 8:33
 405 DANIEL 4:20
 405 2 CHRONICA 2:13
 397 DANIEL 5:21
 396 DANIEL 4:22
 395 JEREMIA 44:25
 393 JEREMIA 38:4
 392 JOSUA 5:6
 390 1 REGUM 2:5
 389 2 CHRONICA 31:1
 388 2 REGUM 23:4
 387 2 CHRONICA 28:15
 385 DANIEL 6:13
 382 DANIEL 3:28
 379 JOSUA 5:1
 378 DANIEL 5:16
 377 JESAIA 39:2
 377 JEREMIA 44:17
 377 DANIEL 4:16
 377 2 SAMUEL 14:19
 377 1 SAMUEL 29:4
 373 JEREMIA 40:4
 373 2 REGUM 23:3
 372 EZECHIEL 43:11
 371 NEHEMIA 9:32
 371 EZECHIEL 42:13
 371 2 REGUM 12:19
 370 JOSUA 9:24
 368 DANIEL 3:3
 367 JOSUA 10:24
 367 1 SAMUEL 17:28
 365 2 SAMUEL 11:11
 364 DEUTERONOMIUM 13:6
 364 2 REGUM 20:13
 364 2 CHRONICA 24:11
 363 JOSUA 23:13
 360 JEREMIA 41:10
 360 2 REGUM 1:13
 359 IOB 42:8
 359 2 REGUM 25:23
 359 2 CHRONICA 23:13
 358 2 SAMUEL 14:7
 358 2 REGUM 23:24
 358 2 CHRONICA 5:13
 357 JOSUA 24:15
 357 ESTHER 8:5
 356 JEREMIA 41:16
 356 JEREMIA 25:9
 356 EZECHIEL 6:13
 356 2 CHRONICA 13:11
 355 NEHEMIA 1:6
 355 ESRA 5:14
 355 DANIEL 3:7
 355 2 CHRONICA 12:13
 355 1 CHRONICA 27:1
 354 JUDICUM 10:6
 354 JOSUA 24:17
 354 DANIEL 6:8
 354 2 REGUM 18:17
 353 DANIEL 5:11
 353 1 SAMUEL 28:15
 353 1 REGUM 8:64
 351 2 SAMUEL 21:12
 351 1 REGUM 11:38
 350 NEHEMIA 3:15
 349 2 CHRONICA 34:21
 349 1 SAMUEL 10:2
 349 1 REGUM 15:18
 347 JEREMIA 42:18
 347 IOB 42:11
 347 2 REGUM 7:12
 347 1 CHRONICA 28:1
 346 JEREMIA 52:25
 346 DANIEL 6:11
 345 DANIEL 3:12
 345 2 CHRONICA 27:5
 344 JOSUA 23:14
 344 EZECHIEL 14:4
 344 ESRA 4:15
 344 2 REGUM 22:13
 343 JEREMIA 44:12
 343 ESTHER 6:9
 343 2 SAMUEL 24:13
 343 2 CHRONICA 5:12
 343 2 CHRONICA 24:25

--
Henry Churchyard   churchh AT usa.net   http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/