Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Christopher V. Kimball" <mail AT cvkimball.com>]

Several major changes have been made in the Unicode/XML Westminster 
Leningrad Codex at:

http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Tanach.xml.

Please report any problems you encounter.

       * The site now conforms to the Unicode 4.1 standard. Users
         should download version v1.12 of the SBL font, *SBL_Hbrw.ttf*
         <http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach-2005-12-13/SBL_Hbrw.ttf>.
         Rendering on Internet Explorer 6+ has improved as a result.
       * The Layout, Content, Font, and DH controls on book pages are
         implemented as pull down lists to speed access. The default
         Layout has been changed to Chapter. (Suggested by Gregg A.
         Serene.)

         The site will attempt to place a "cookie" on your machine to
         preserve the selected values of the pull down lists and the
         citation text fields from session to session. The site will
         operate correctly if you refuse this cookie. (Suggested by
         Samuel Arnet.)

       * The XML markup has been substantially changed.

         /Although this is a significant change in markup, viewers of
         the site will only notice differences in the qere/ketib variants./

            1. The mark up of the header on the index and book files
               has been changed to the *Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)*
               standard header, *<teiHeader>*. The new header is
               compatible with modern archiving standards. The header
               may be viewed by clicking on the major title of the
               index or book page.
            2. Word (*w*), ketib (*k*), and qere (*q*) tags now contain
               /orthographic/ rather than /prosodic/ words. Instead of
               *<w>A maqaf B<w/>* the markup is now *<w>A
               maqaf<w/>* *<w>B<w/>*. The change provides more accurate
               representation of ketib/qere variants. Citations
               specifying the a verse XML tag must be re-evaluated.
               That is, a former citation of the form C:V.N may change.
            3. The reversed nun, /nun hafucha/ has its own markup,
               *<reversednun/>*, which is similar to that previously
               used for the samekh, *<samekh/>*, and pe, *<pe/>*, markers.
            4. Eleven letters in the Leningrad Codex have special text
               decoration. For example, the ayin and dalet in the
               Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4
               <http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/TanachCitation.xml?Deut6:4>,
               are larger than normal. The markup includes a special
               tag <*s t="decoration"*>X<*/s*> for these characters.
               The *t* attribute may be large (4 instances), small (3
               instances), or suspended (4 instances). The enclosed
               characters (X) are displayed with the text decoration.
               The special markup is invisible to most XPath-based
               machine processing. Superscripts indicating the
               transcription notes for these decorations (notes number
               5,6,7) and for the reversed nun (note 8) have been
               removed. Titles continue to show the transcription note,
               however.
            5. The new markup is technically defined in the W3C Schema
               file *Tanach.xsd*
               <http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach-2005-12-13/Tanach.xsd>.
               The files are /not/ checked against this schema during
               viewing.

If problems are encountered with this substantial revision, /please 
report the problems/ and revert to the previous version 
<http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach-2005-10-19/Tanach.xml> also accessible 
from the home page.
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