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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 10:41:14 -0800

On 19/01/2004 09:56, Trevor Peterson wrote:

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. ...

They did the job for a time, but only as long as biblical Hebrew scholars could sit in their own small corner and ignore anything being done in other varieties of Hebrew, even ignore what their own colleagues were doing. Now the relics of these non-standard transliteration fonts are causing no end of trouble. Literally. I and my former SIL colleagues have spent man-years trying to sort out the incredible mess that these old practices have caused, every person doing what is right in their own eyes, and there is no end to the task in sight. Well, perhaps there is an end in sight, but the only possible end is for EVERYONE to follow Unicode, whether they like it or not. If not, we are straight back to the aftermath of the Tower of Babel.

... 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?


If all the Hebrew users in the world (biblical scholars, Israelis, Jews around the world, etc) could get together and make their own decisions on a single technology which they could all use, that would be fine, as they could then share their data. But the only conceivable way in which such a diverse bunch could work together is through international standards bodies. Those bodies have done their work, and have presented a good workable solution for all Hebrew users - which is Unicode. Why not use it? Why are some people determined to badmouth it?

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.

How about communicate with Hebrew users in Israel and with Jews worldwide? How about communicate with colleagues who prefer SIL Ezra while you are using SP Tiberian, or vice versa? How about make use of the large range of Unicode fonts which are already available (though not many support accents properly yet)? How about use all the nice Hebrew language support provided by OSs and standard software? How about getting proper bidirectional behaviour e.g. word wrapping with RTL text instead of being able to view text only in a fixed width window because all line breaks have to be hard coded? Is that enough reasons?

...

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.


If people want to communicate with the world, they need to be prepared to speak the world's language. They can't use e-mail lists at all if they don't have access to a computer; it is not unreasonable to expect them to keep their computers up to date. It's not usually a matter of cost, although I accept that some older computers (e.g. pre-1998) are not able to support Unicode Hebrew well. And there are still some problems with MacOS and some other OSs. But within a very few years there will be no good reason not to use Unicode as the main Hebrew encoding on lists like this one - as I am trying out below.

שָׁלוֹם, Peter

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






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