From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Mon May 24 2004 - 12:32:49 CDT
James Kass wrote:
>>Because they want to search documents in the
>>Hebrew *language* using Hebrew characters in
>>search strings?
>>Because they don't want to guess
>>in what script variant an online corpus is encoded
>>when doing searches?
> Guessing's not their job. It's up to a sophisticated search
> engine to find what users seek. Some of us have tried to
> dispel some of these fears by pointing out possible solutions.
Indeed, and I have made similar points to my semiticist and Biblical scholarship friends
and correspondents regarding methods for working around the canonical combining class
problems for Hebrew, and generally try to help people realise that the aspects of Unicode
that seem to them 'broken' are not necessarily an impediment to getting work done.
However, all this has left the understandable impression among many of these people that
Unicode almost goes out of its way to make things difficult for people working with
ancient Hebrew texts. Things that should be simple end up being complicated and require
the development of sophisticated systems to perform simple tasks. Now the perception seems
to be that in order to facilitate plain-text distinction of 'Phoenician' and Hebrew, yet
more complexity and sophistication will be required to encode, search and study ancient
texts. Frankly, I don't blame people for asking whether that distinction is worth the trouble.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: Typespaces, by Peter Burnhill White Mughals, by William Dalrymple Hebrew manuscripts of the Middle Ages, by Colette Sirat
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