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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew transliteration

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew transliteration
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:15:05 -0800

On 19/01/2004 07:45, Trevor Peterson wrote:

... Unicode also has some of
its own design problems, which may prevent it from becoming a universal
standard. I'm not saying here that it doesn't serve its purpose as far
as that goes, but it may be overly optimistic to think that Unicode will
ever be an ideal solution for the needs of scholars. Maybe it will
someday; I'm not turning my back on it, but I'm also not putting all my
eggs in the Unicode basket. ...

Indeed Unicode has design problems. But design problems won't stop it becoming a universal standard. The major software companies, publishers etc are not going to reverse their strategy because of minor problems with a few rare accents in one dead language. Unicode is coming, whether we like it or not, so we had better get ready for it. We should never expect it to be ideal for scholars, and so we need to be ready to work round its limitations; nevertheless, it is potential much better than any existing solutions.

... Regardless, there are still holes in the
universal coverage of Unicode for all possible needs, so we haven't
exhausted the need for transliteration to overcome technical
limitations. ...

The only holes in Unicode as currently defined, related to biblical Hebrew, are all rather subtle issues, none of which are dealt with by your proposed transliteration, or as far as I know by any existing transliteration (although M-C encoding comes close).

... (Note, for instance, that all the major ancient language
e-lists still ask for transliteration.) ...

This is not so much because of technical limitations, more because not all list users are prepared to upgrade their software (even when upgrades are free) to support Unicode.

... For this sort of scenario, a
system that works on bare-bones character sets and minimal formatting is
undoubtedly best. I may not like the look of MCW, but it works for its
purpose. When less precision is required, I'm personally happy to stick
with a general-purpose transcription system.


I agree that MCW is probably what we need for this list right now, but not for much longer I hope.


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






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