Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yaakov Stein" <yaakov_s AT rad.com>]

Isaac,
 
Both my email server and client handle unicode, and I frequently receive
non-Latin, including Chinese, Korean, ... and of course Hebrew.
BTW, the mail header of your message contains the following nonstandard
sections
 
--Apple-Mail-2--1025637625
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
 charset=US-ASCII;
 delsp=yes;
 format=flowed
 
--Apple-Mail-2--1025637625
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html;
 charset=ISO-8859-1
 
which lead me to believe that your email client already converts
the text to 7-bit Latin character ASCII.
 
Last year I purchased the large format edition of "tikun simanim".
It has a concise version of minhat shai next to the text in regular
letters.
In addition, it has a collection of masora remarks.
The regular format edition has the same content,
but the masora and minhat shai are not on the same page as the text,
making it hard to use.
There is also a pocket edition, but I don't know what it includes.
My main complaint with this series is that I find it distracting
to read as it uses so many font tricks (large letter for accents, 
distorted "left sin", ta'amim so large that they frequently almost hit
the word above/below, etc).
 
Regarding eradication of the dagesh, I can understand you sentiments.
I have little interest in daily life with any dagesh other than those
in B, K, and P (I find it very funny that the tikun simanim goes to such
trouble
to emphasize the dagesh in G, D, etc. since no-one distinguishes between
the two).
 
However, I also read tora/neviim/scrolls in religious contexts,
where I DO respect the dagesh, shva na, etc. (otherwise people would
complain).
Also, I am against anything that would push spoken Hebrew further away
from
biblical Hebrew. Right now the younger generation in Israel can pick up
the
tanach and read most of it with little difficulty. Even relatively minor
orthographic
changes might make the tanach seem strange and uninviting to young
people.
 
Yaakov (J) Stein