Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

Peter wrote:

> 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.

Perhaps not, but since when have the inclinations of major software
companies driven scholarly practice? How many of us who aren't fluent in
Israeli Hebrew used the national encoding before Unicode came along? We
used transliteration fonts, and they did the job. It was something small
enough and specialized enough that we could make our own decisions about
the technology we would use. Why should that have to change, just
because Unicode exists?

> 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.

How so? What can it do that we couldn't do without it? About the only
place where I can see that it makes a tangible difference is in Web
development.
> 
> >... 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).

I was talking here about areas where Unicode either isn't being used
(even though it could be) or currently can't be used (applications that
haven't caught up with it yet).
> 
> >... (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.

Well, then for them it's a technical limitation. If writing my own
program were the only option available for me to get a certain thing
done, and I didn't know how to program, I would call that a technical
limitation. For someone who isn't "prepared to upgrade," it's a
technical limitation in the same sense. Yes, the technology is there.
But if a significant number of people aren't prepared to use it, it's
still a limitation for the field. And if Unicode's only major advantage
is ubiquity, such limitations are relevant.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics