[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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