Large and small letters

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Joel_Salomon
         
Is support for the Masoretic large and small letters found
occasionally in the Hebrew Bible planned for later releases of the SBL
Hebrew font?  (See
for
examples.)  Presumably this would be done with OpenType tables.  If
so, is it yet planned how the nikud will shift and/or scale?

--Joel

         

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: John Hudson
         
Type sizing is usually a layout level operation, not a font operation. It could be done in a font, using OpenType glyph variants, but I don't think there is much benefit in doing so. In fact, since font size information is a basic element of rich text layout, while OpenType glyph variants are at a higher, less reliably interchanged level, I would recommend implementing larger and smaller letters by changing the font size, as has apparently been done in the typographic examples on the (very useful) 'special letters' page. Obviously for correct display of the smaller letters one would want to offset them from the baseline, but this is also a function that word processing and page layout applications typically provide.

The only situation I can think of in which it might be useful for the larger or smaller letters to be variants in the font would be if they were used in a situation in which the holam mark 'drifts', i.e. if they were followed by a weak aleph or, indeed, where themselves weak alephs preceded by a holam. In that case, it would be important for the glyphs to be in a single size of a single font, because changes in type size delimit glyph runs for OpenType Layout. But I didn't notice such a situation in the list of Torah examples on the web page.
         

[ArchivePoster]

Posted by: Joel_Salomon
         
On 8/3/07, John Hudson wrote:
> I would recommend implementing larger and smaller letters by changing
> the font size, as has apparently been done in the typographic
> examples on the (very useful) 'special letters' page. Obviously for
> correct display of the smaller letters one would want to offset them
> from the baseline, but this is also a function that word processing
> and page layout applications typically provide.

Actually, I found offsets from the baseline to be very tricky to deal
with.  Lots of trial-and-error until I got the large and small letters
aligned with the normal sized ones at the top-line (as is customary in
Biblical Hebrew).  Looking around at several printed Bibles, I've
found several---even some that had otherwise nice typography---that
don't adjust to the top-line.

BTW:  Is there a less clumsy term than top-line for what I'm describing?

(Actually, the page I linked to has a picture of hand-written text
where the large letters are expanded above the top-line and below the
baseline.  I find this surprising, since in my understanding the
letters are written to "hang" from the "sirtut" scoring in the
parchment.)

Do the letters with flat tops have a common height in SBL Hebrew?
Would be the rough equivalent of the x-height, I suppose.

> The only situation I can think of in which it might be useful for the
> larger or smaller letters to be variants in the font would be if they
> were used in a situation in which the holam mark 'drifts'

> But I didn't notice such a situation in the list of Torah examples on
> the web page.

There's also the issue of where to put the vowels on a raised-baseline
small letter.  See, for example, the name Parmashta (Esther 9:9;
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/natlang/hebrew/esth9-9.jpg).  Most Bibles
I've seen with raised small letters have the punctuation for these
letters in the usual position for full-sized letters, although the
dagesh/mapiq or shin/sin dots are scaled.

When I get a copy of XeTeX to work on my Windows machine, I'll try the
technique of attaching the punctuation to an invisible letter
overlayed with the small letter; but that's a hack and wouldn't
translate to other applications.  On the other hand, some of the
oddities on the page require some form of hack or other.

--Joel

         

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