[EMAIL PROTECTED] scripsit:It is not entirely unsound, because in a case like this, where there is a distinction in the text, the encoding must be such that that distinction in the text is either explicitly encoded or can be determined unambiguously (and preferably efficiently, especially for a rendering algorithm) from the context. In this case the general algorithm to determine which collocation of holam and vav is intended is complex (requiring a recursive lookback potentially to the beginning of the word) and not entirely unambiguous, although there is a simplified algorithm which will account for all regularly spelled Hebrew words.
This lends credence
to those of us who are BHS fans and would like to see a visible difference
between
holem-waw and waw-holem. The most reasonable means of achieving this is to
encode the holem before the waw when it is holem-waw.
This argument is unsound. Encoding is essentially autonomous to either input methods or rendering methods, and it may demand things that would be very unintuitive to the uninstructed user who examines the encoding directly. There may be very good reasons for encoding holem-waw as other than a holem followed by a waw.
The issue of whether the distinction is a real and ancient one or one introduced by relatively modern editors is entirely independent. It is certainly older than BHS; for example, the special form of the holam vav vowel (not at all like vav with a regularly placed holam) is clearly seen in the facsimile of an 1889 Viennese Bible reproduced by Haralambous, http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/biblical-hebrew94.pdf, p.18, second line of text, third word from the left. Anyway, Unicode should be able to make any distinction which is commonly made by modern editors. If it were a criterion for inclusion in Unicode that a character had been in use as a distinct character for centuries, the standard would be a lot slimmer than it actually is.
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
