[sword-devel] Module TischMorph & other Ancient Greek modules - getting rid of the quotation mark?

[David Haslam]

Further to my message sent to the modules team, I have suggestion for SWORD developers.

Modify how GlobalOptionFilter=UTF8GreekAccents works with respect to U+2019.

Currently the filter doesn't care how this codepoint is being used semantically.

We could make a practical change as follows:

Rule: Do not hide U+2019 if the preceding character is not a Greek letter.

However, that would not be sufficient to cover all the cases in the StatResGNT module currently in CrossWire Beta.

Here's one that's better:

Rule: Donothide U+2019 if the preceding character isnota word character.

With this in operation, the source text would not need to be changed in those places where the RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK is immediately after a punctuation mark.

Then what about the remaining places where it is immediately after a Greek letter?

A simple kludge for an improved source text would be to insert a zero width space or a zero width non joiner. Doing so would protect the quotation mark from being treated contrarily as a Greek diacritic when its purpose is simply to close a quotation.

Best regards,

David

Sent with [Proton Mail](https://pr.tn/ref/SWXT9A5YZ67G) secure email.

On Saturday, March 15th, 2025 at 6:02 PM, David Haslam <dfhdfh at protonmail.com> wrote:

> Thinking about the teleological conflict caused by using U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK as a Greek Diacritic,
> I wish to suggest that in modules where this was the case, that we might replace all U+2019 by U+0315 COMBINING COMMA ABOVE RIGHT.
>
> This displays very similarly, viz
>
> - U+2019 παρ’
> - U+0315 παρ̕
>
> NB. The latter was not already used anywhere in the TischMorphmodule.
>
> The advantage would be that if we did this to all the Ancient Greek modules and to any other module that makes the same contrary use of U+2019,
> then eventually, we might update the SWORD engine such that it no longer hides it with GlobalOptionFilter=UTF8GreekAccents.
>
> This would free up U+2019 for it's proper use as a RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK to end speech begun with U+2018 LEFTSINGLE QUOTATION MARK.We have just encountered this use in Beta module StatResGNT which contains sections of text marked with both DOUBLE and SINGLE QUOTATION marks.
>
> I propose therefore that we perform an experiment, by implementing my suggestion first in module TischMorph, last updated 2012-01-09.
> This has 1218 instances of U+2019 and in each case, it's used contrarily as aGreek Diacritic.
>
> Here's a counted list of the Greek letters that are followed by a U+2019.
>
>> 0031 δ’
>> 0109 θ’
>> 0232 τ’
>> 0287 π’
>> 0221 λ’
>> 0135 φ’
>> 0059 ρ’0144 ι’
>
> This is how they would look if the proposed replacements were made:
>
>> 0031 δ̕
>> 0109 θ̕
>> 0232 τ̕
>> 0287 π̕
>> 0221 λ̕
>> 0135 φ̕
>> 0059 ρ̕
>> 0144 ι̕
>
> NB. The upstream source for this module is no longer found at http://morphgnt.org/
> The URL now just displays a 404 message saying "There isn't a GitHub Pages site here."
> If we can no longer find where it may have moved, we might have to use a "round trip" of mod2imp and imp2vs to rebuild the module with my suggested change.
>
> If my suggestion has any merit, we should also first discuss it with NT scholars such as our friends at STEP Bible and their friends at Tyndale House.
>
> Best regards,
>
> David
>
> Sent with [Proton Mail](https://pr.tn/ref/SWXT9A5YZ67G) secure email.
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