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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Unicode/XML transcription of the MC electronic BHS Tanach

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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Unicode/XML transcription of the MC electronic BHS Tanach
  • Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 17:52:23 -0500

Clayton Javurek wrote:

Clayton Javurek
E-MAIL: javurek AT asu.edu

Is there any website out there where one can view
the entire Hebrew OT text without any fonts
required? A fontless website?

It doesn't seem like it would be terribly interesting, since without any fonts you wouldn't be able to see anything :-)

I presume, though, that you mean a Web site where you can use any font you like. For the most part, that would only be possible with a transliteration like the old OTA text, on which this one is based. It's a precise transliteration system, but horrible to read IMHO. For that, you could use any font capable of representing the basic ASCII characters. For a Unicode text, there are a few basic elements that are necessary. One is a Unicode-capable system. Most current versions of Windows satisfy this requirement, and the more recent releases of any of the major Web browsers should be able to display it. In a Windows system, Uniscribe is the rendering application, which has gone through several revisions but can be hard to update, because it's not readily available except as a component in various software packages. (The most recent version of MS-Office would do it, and I guess there are a couple of other apps that include it.) Finally, you need a font capable of displaying Unicode characters, particularly the characters in which you're interested. There are a few publicly available fonts that try to render a lot of what Unicode has to offer (although I suspect that most of them don't include Chinese, for instance), but sometimes you're better off looking for a specialized font that targets a particular character set. The two mentioned in this thread are currently about the best freely available fonts for rendering Unicode Hebrew. If all you want is the consonantal text, it probably doesn't make much difference. If you want full voweling and/or accenting, you really want a good Hebrew font like Ezra or SBL Hebrew. A Unicode Hebrew text should work in any Unicode font that includes the Hebrew characters. But it will look pretty ugly in many of them.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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