[sword-devel] OSISVariants & SWORD

[Timothy Shen-McCullough]

It seems that you are correct regarding the rendering of Tisch on PocketSword, however if one uses the 2TGreek module which includes Tisch., it does have the option to show the Greek accents. It seems though that if one is viewing the 2TGreek module at the time of the setting change, it requires changing the Bible being used to a different one and then back again in order to refresh the display of the text and have the accents shown. Both the TR and WHNU modules do not seem to have the option to turn on accents. 

Regarding the Hebrew text 2 out of the 3 Bibles that I have loaded, do have the options to show the accenting/diacritics type marks as well. The text does not need a refresh though like the Tisch. module seems to need. Also, it seems ( initially at least) that you are correct in that the default is to not show them. 

However, I think I prefer the texts without the accenting/diacritics by default, at least on PocketSword. There's a lot of reasons and I currently don't have the time to get into them. However, the lack of accents, I think was one of the things that attracted me to PocketSword. 

Regarding the Hebrew, unless something has changed relatively recently, the iPhone can display the accenting, but, by default, does not have the ability to have it inputed. One would need to buy a specialized keyboard from the AppStore in order to do that. This is one of the reasons why I think that the default should be without the diacritics because if one can't turn them off or the idea that it's possible to turn them off does not occur to a user, then they become stuck being unable to search the text by entering in Hebrew letters/words. 

Also, unless I'm mistaken, the original Hebrew texts did not have diacritics/accents. 

The Hebrew diacritics also introduce other problems as well. If I were to have them and not be able to get rid of them, they would interfere with the linguistics research/testing that I do and they would interfere with the New Testament research that I do. 

I think I'd better end my reply here. I've started to not really be replying to the previous post(s), but be writing in general on the matter. I might perhaps write more on this matter elsewhere. This subject just happen to hit on a lot of things that I have an interest in such as user interface design/appearance, language, the Bible, and PocketSword. 

In general, I don't think that I'm disagreeing with David regarding that the Sword engine should do properly what the instructions say it should do. It should of course do what its documentation says. I think though that some discussion should be done regarding details of the matter. 
For example, I think it's possible that Hebrew Old Testament text should by default be without accenting/diacritics because it's more faithful to the original texts, but for the Greek New Testament it may have originally had accenting marks so the opposite in a sense would be true for it's default. This is just an example (There's is also different editions and/or versions of texts which by their own default may include or not include accents and etc.). I'm not right now advocating one or the other. My point though is that in this example, the presence of accenting marks would be opposite to  each other. Accents are a variant to the Hebrew, but not to the Greek. I think this may be reiterating David's question or something implied from it which I think poses the question of what is "default", or is there a default? or what system should be used? Should all accenting be considered variants? etc. Perhaps even the term "variants" should be changed since it may be introducing confusion. I know that for myself my brain keeps getting confused on how can accenting be a variant for one thing, but not to the other? Especially I'm confused when thinking about it in a computer programming sense because I would expect consistency in the meaning of the values being assigned and used. 

Sorry, for any confusion or issues that this email may cause. I'm writing it on my phone and so I may not have written this as clearly or as well structured as I think I have. 

--Sent from phone--
-TS

--Sent from phone--
> On Mar 24, 2017, at 4:57 AM, David Haslam <dfhmch at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yep, *PocketSword* hides both Hebrew vowels and cantillation. :(
> 
> And then there's *UTF8ArabicPoints*.
> 
> Yet strangely enough, *PocketSword* does show the points in (say) the
> *AraNAV* module.
> There's a strange inconsistency within this topic.
> I suppose this came to the scene later than Greek & Hebrew, and was
> implemented in SWORD more logically as a /subtractive/ filter.
> 
> I've yet to test what diatheke does with option filter *-o p* 
> And I don't suppose anyone has ever tested it on an Arabic/Persian module
> with option *-o r* for Arabic Shaping....
> cf. Does any front-end have a UI option to toggle Arabic Shaping?
> 
> As for more than two variants, perhaps we need to mock up a module with a
> third variant just to test what SWORD does.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
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