Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Lance Petersen <petersenlance AT yahoo.com>]

I'm not a scholar, and usually I'm a lurker here. But, I've been working on a 
personal project for the last few years (meant for my eyes only) that will be 
affected drastically by the changes that were being discussed. I bought an 
electronic library from a company that is now defunct, but the software was 
relatively good. I've put the unpointed BHS text in there and it's now 
searchable. I've also linked quite a few of the words to a digital 
dictionary. If I'm reading the Hebrew text and I come across a word I'm not 
familiar with, in less time than it takes to reach over and touch my BDB, I 
can have the definition in front of me. In less time than it takes to 
actually look the word up in my "hardcopy" BDB, I can click on a button I've 
setup and hear the Hebrew passage spoken. I can click on another button and 
hear the passage sung\chanted. (I'm learnin' what all those other funny 
little marks are in my Chumash.) I've linked a few place names with maps. I 
can do anything I can imagine
 within the software's limitations. This is all available to me from inside 
the document. None of these things are possible with paper documents. (My BDB 
is *So* two weeks ago!) This helps make for what I would call effective 
study. We just need to learn to use the tools presented to us. I'm not 
lashing out at Mr Rea here. If I sound angry you'll find out why in the next 
paragraph.
 
One of the limitations of the software is fatal. It uses ASCII text and left 
to right reading order. Every line in the Hebrew text has a carriage return 
that I've put in. If I change screen resolution or simply change the window 
size, the text suddenly looks like something found in a diaper. I'm limited 
to a single font, and nobody can view it without that font. (Yeah, I know, 
I'm the only one that was supposed to see it.) I could go on forever. These 
were all things Peter Kirk brought up in his side of the discussion. I am all 
for Peter and his buddies creating fixes for these kinds of problems. I'm 
also all for people letting the developers know what their needs and 
objections are. The Unicoders (for lack of a better term) and other 
developers are far more apt to listen to some members of this list because of 
their credentials than they are to someone like me. That's why I thought the 
discussion was vital. Let those problems get hammered out now. That way, I , 
or someone like me,
 won't see years worth of work on a pet project go up in flames because of a 
software oversight.
 
Lance Petersen
 


Bill Rea <bsr15 AT cantsl.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

Lance wrote:-

>Why should I buy a book when I can put a whole library (and a rather
>large one, at that!) into a smaller space than the book would take?

Maybe not buy, but certainly you should use a book or print the portions
from your electronic library if you wish to study effectively. Numerous
studies have shown that humans comprehend text far better when it is on
paper rather than on a computer screen. I write for a hobby and when it
comes to finding and fixing the small problems in an article or poem,
nothing beats printing it out, sitting down at a desk with a pen or pencil
and going through it.

On a mailing list like this it would be useful to be able to see the
Hebrew in question because we are usually talking about small pieces.
But if you want to read anything more than a few verses I expect you'll
want it on paper.

>what is certain is the digital form is going to replace all the
>hardcopies.

There is nothing certain about this at all. What the ``digital
revolution'' is doing is moving the place of printing from large
centralized facilities to the end users.

Bill Rea, Information Technology Dept., Canterbury University \_
E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax 64-3-364-2332 /) 
Zealand
Unix Systems Administrator (/'

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>===== Original Message From Lance Petersen <petersenlance AT yahoo.com> =====
>None of these things are possible with paper documents. (My BDB is *So* two 
weeks ago!) This helps make for what I would call effective study.

I just have a couple of thoughts here. First, in response to what you say 
above, I agree that having computer access to things like dictionary and 
concordance lookups is a lot more efficient. In fact, the last time I was 
trying to make more room in my library, I ended up loaning some Greek and 
Hebrew concordances to my church library, because I just never use them. 
BibleWorks is much more versatile in what it can find, and I can link 
directly 
to the contexts without having to flip madly through BHS. Even so, there is 
at 
least one drawback that I can think of--a significant enough drawback, that I 
would encourage you to keep BDB handy. Consider the difference between 
shopping in a bookstore and at Amazon.com. In a bookstore, you go find the 
section you're interested in. Maybe you're looking for a new release, or 
maybe 
you have the topic in mind. You might even know exactly what book you want, 
but to find it, you have to do a little browsing through the shelves. (Make 
it 
a used bookstore, and the adventure only grows.) At Amazon.com, you simply go 
to the search engine and plug in whatever--the title if you want a particular 
book, or keywords if not. Often it will take you directly to the book for 
you. 
Other times, it might give you a small subset to choose from. But there is no 
meandering through a given section in the store. For one thing, there are 
just 
too many books to do that productively. For another, most of the need is 
gone. 
Amazon.com might try to keep you there a while by recommending other books, 
but it's pretty easy to pass them by. Another difference is that you have 
only 
limited ability to pick up a book and flip through it. They're getting better 
about providing sample pages, but it's a pretty restrictive approach.

Anyway, my point here is that looking up words can be much the same as 
shopping for books. Along the way to finding the word you're concerned with, 
you just might see something interesting. By restricting yourself to 
computerized links, this possibility is seriously minimized. Particularly 
with 
BDB, the arrangement according to roots (although problematic at times) can 
afford several interesting connections.

[snipped]

>Let those problems get hammered out now. That way, I , or someone
>li
> ke me,
> won't see years worth of work on a pet project go up in flames because of a 
software oversight.

My second thought is that things are perhaps not as dismal as you might 
think. 
ASCII isn't going anywhere. Unicode was specifically designed to make sure it 
would retain the same coding. You might want to keep your font under lock and 
key :-) but otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much about your library becoming 
obsolete. (If Peter et al. can provide you with a means to convert the whole 
thing, well and good. I'm just saying you shouldn't think your life's work is 
down the drain because Unicode now exists.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics