Re: [hebrew] Re: Hebrew composition model, with cantillation marks

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2003 - 05:39:44 CST


On 30/10/2003 21:15, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:

> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
>>
>> On 28/10/2003 18:49, Philippe Verdy wrote:
>>
>>> I just finished an Excel speadsheet that shows the Hebrew
>>> composition model,
>>> and all the problems caused by the canonical order of Hebrew
>>> diacritics.
>>>
>>> In summary, most problems come from consonnant modifiers which have a
>>> combining class higher than vowels or vowel modifiers.
>>>
>>> If vowels had been assigned a null combining class, such problems
>>> would have
>>> not appeared. The idea of generating a CGJ before all vowels in input
>>> methods (and then let a prenormalization process remove unnecessary
>>> CGJ in
>>> composed strings) seems interesting, as it forces vowels to behave
>>> like base
>>> characters, but it does not solve all the problem, but only the
>>> ordering
>>> problem caused by the wrong combining classes 21, 24 and 25 assigned
>>> respectively to DAGESH/MAPIQ, SHIN DOT and SIN DOT, that come logically
>>> before the vowels (in classes 10 to 20), or vowel modifiers (classes
>>> 22, 23
>>> and 26).
>>>
>>>
>> Actually rafe, in class 23, and varika, class 26 but not used in
>> Hebrew, should be considered consonant modifiers. Rafe basically
>> indicates the absence of dagesh, and so these two fit in the same
>> logical class.
>
>
> This may or may not matter, but I should point out that rafe (or
> something that looks an awful lot like it) has started to see some use
> for other purposes. The very large Artscroll publication house puts a
> rafe over a letter which has a "moving" sheva under it (as opposed to
> a "quiescent" sheva. I think "shewa mobile" is the fancy term). A
> particularly innovative book of Psalms I have uses it precisely the
> opposite: to indicate a *silent* sheva, but only for cases where they
> think you're likely to make a mistake. It also uses it for non-dagesh
> in cases where they think you might get it wrong intuitively.
>
> ~mark
> Trying to wade through email after ~2days with mail server down. Sorry.
>
>
>
>
>
Interesting. But I don't think it matters because rafe and sheva do not
interact typographically. I suppose it could cause difficulties if
someone wanted to collate rafe and sheva as a pair - this process would
be confused if the two were prevented from being in canonical order by a
CGJ. But there would be even more of a problem if they were in canonical
order and so potentially separated by dagesh and meteg. Probably the
best modification of Philippe's proposal would be to take this as a
separate function of rafe, and to order rafe used in this function as a
vowel modifier, but rafe used as an anti-dagesh as a consonant modifier.
The rendering would be the same.

-- 
Peter Kirk
peter@qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/


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