[B-Greek] [Why non-unicode? was--Free Polytonic Uncial Greek Unicode Font?

Randall Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Aug 6 05:44:54 EDT 2006


Shalom
Καλη ημερα, θωμα,
χαιρειν
εγραψας
  >I'm at a loss why typefaces
developed for biblical study (e.g. Greek) are not mapped according to
Unicode (e.g. Mounce's Teknia font is a non-Unicode example), but
rather assign Greek glyphs to Latin indices.>

this is symptomatic of a deep separation in the field between the  
tangible world and the artificial construct of the field. Software  
developers did not start out with the typewriter keyboards involved.  
In many cases they did not even think about it.

In the 1980's 'bible software' projects were started by people who  
were in contact with seminarians but usually (not always!) without  
any contact to the living languages or users of the fonts. Thus,  
Hebrew and Greek fonts were developed in America without raising the  
question about what the Hebrew or Greek typewriters had been using  
for 100 years. When I raised this issue of an 'Israeli keyboard' in  
the mid-80s at an SBL exhibition, one of the developers shallowly  
responded 'IBM cannot dictate what a keyboard will be'. I responded  
with, 'IBM has nothing to do with it, just use the Hebrew typewriter  
for Hebrew speakers who touch type Hebrew. Ditto for Greek." Those  
far-sighted developers (tongue-in-cheek) developed their square  
wheels and made their files problematic. Thankfully, Unicode is  
finally catching up with them. In the meantime they created  
unnecessary 'biblical studies bubbles', detached from both the Greek  
world and the Hebrew world.

there is a parallel here for how the languages are taught, τοις  
εχουσιν ωτα. It will be interesting to see how media- 
developers will proceed. There will certainly be a call for some more  
square-wheels for the immediate future, maybe even some roads built  
for square wheels. When developers discover what is capable of being  
done, and their complicity in the status quo, there may be some  
positive changes. This decade is a good one for for making changes  
because there is currently negligible dependence on sound within the  
professional guild.

ερρωσο
Randall Buth


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