Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Peter:

This will probably also be my last message in this string.

Yes, you have repeatedly _claimed_ that there is a bug, actually two as you 
state again below, in my email program. But you have not demonstrated what 
that bug is. All I have are your unsubstantiated claims. I don’t mean this as 
a personal attack, and please don’t take it as such, but when the evidence 
that I can find points elsewhere, I find it hard to accept your claims 
without more proof on your part. So far the only evidence you have proferred 
is that your mail program cannot read Hebrew encoded in character entities: 
but your mail program can’t read character entities anyways, so you have 
presented evidence of the limited nature of your mail program, not that there 
is a bug in the one I use.

Furthermore, you claim that this is plain text only email forum. Windows-1255 
encoding is not plain text. Therefore either your mail program can read no 
Hebrew characters at all, or it is not truly plain text only. It obviously 
cannot read character entities, which is an international standard connected 
with unicode, to which you have admitted.

The ibiblio software does have a bug. It takes character entities and changes 
them, distorts them, into html text strings which no browser nor mail program 
can read as characters. That this is not unique to my mail program is shown 
by that the ibiblio software took the character entities that you wrote in 
your mail program and changed them too. This is a bug that affects any 
scholarly discussion that deals with non-Roman writing systems as part of 
their discussion, not just B-Hebrew. Therefore the ibiblio support team 
should be informed of this bug so that they can get a patch to stop it.

There have been repeated complaints that the transcription scheme is unwieldy 
and often difficult to read. That some have mail situations which allow them 
receipt of ASCII only messages means that we cannot get away from the 
transcription scheme entirely, but for us who have more capable mail 
programs, it would be nice to have the Hebrew as well. Someday the switch 
will occure, just not today. It looks as if the next time the issue comes up, 
it should start with a survey of mail programs, to find capable ones that can 
read international standards.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

> 
> On 11/07/2005 19:56, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> > Peter:
> >
> > You admit that the problem with your reading of Hebrew in email 
> > messages is your mail program.
> >
> >
> 
> No, I have consistently said that the problem is with YOUR mail 
> program, not with mine. Your program sends out Hebrew characters in 
> an invalid encoding.
> 
> > The online email program that I am using may be changing the 
> > Hebrew to character entities, but the interpretation of those 
> > character entities to Hebrew letters when I read messages is 
> > happening in my browser. That your mail program does not render 
> > html correctly, in this case character entities, should not be 
> > blamed on any other source. Apparently that is common among mail 
> > programs.
> >
> >
> 
> Plain text is NOT HTML!!! Therefore YOUR mail reader which renders 
> it as if it is HTML is WRONG, and mine and others which do not are 
> CORRECT.
> 
> > Maybe we should inform ibiblio that their software has a bug that 
> > is corrupting character entities into html text strings, a bug 
> > that effects not only us, but others who deal with other 
> > languages. A patch shouldn’t be that difficult. Who to contact?
> >
> >
> 
> There is NO BUG in the ibiblio software, at least none that we have 
> found. The only bug we have found is in YOUR mail program - in fact 
> a matching pair of bugs.
> 
> I will not enter into any more correspondence on this, as I have 
> wasted a lot of time trying to explain the situation and you seem 
> to be refusing to understand the problem.
> 
> -- Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/