A kind list member has advised privately that CAL does now use Unicode for Syriac text.
I must not have been looking in the right places. >From this page, http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/fonts/fontinfo.html "Most of our Aramaic text display is now done in Unicode, for which see our page hebunicodeinfo.html "However, m any of the bibliographic, dictionary, and newsletter reference pages displayed on this site still use a transliteration font ("CalSemitic") and a Jewish Aramaic font ("WebHebrew AD" or "CalWebHebrew"). ..." It's nice to see a transition to Unicode and it's comforting to see that Unicode Syriac is used rather than Unicode Hebrew to store and display Syriac text. Best regards, James Kass