Endings: vowel + accent combinations without a consonant

[fwik]

In a grammatical discussion, I would like to be able to refer to endings that begin with a vowel, such as the masculine plural ending -im. Generally the dotted circle acts as a surrogate consonant and there is no problem, as in:


But if an accent is added to the vowel, the vowel and accent don't combine, and instead there are 2 dotted circles instead of one:


Since the same thing happens in other fonts as well, I suppose this is a Microsoft issue rather than an SBL Hebrew issue. In any case, does anyone know of a fix or work-around?

Thanks.

[sbl_hooker]

Dear fwik,

Welcome to the SBL Font Forum, and thanks for your post.  In order that we might better help you with the issue you are having, could you provide the Operating System and Word Processor (with version) that you are using?

Thanks,

Chris

[fwik]

Could you provide the Operating System and Word Processor (with version) that you are using?

Sorry--I'm using Vista and Word 2007. I corresponded with John Hudson about this issue some time ago, and he confirmed the problem also in Wordpad and Notepad.

[tiro_hudson]

There's no workaround for this: the MS Uniscribe shaping engine automatically inserts the dotted circle before each combining mark that it doesn't recognise as being preceded by a valid base letter. This creates numerous frustrations for people trying to produce pedagogical materials.

I could modify the font GSUB lookups so that any occurrence of two or more dotted circles becomes a single dotted circle, but I really dislike putting this kind of hack into fonts.

Ideally, for the situation you describe, it should be possible to insert an explicit dotted circle character (U+25CC) and have it recognised as a valid base for combinations of marks by the Uniscribe Hebrew engine. I will bring this to the attention of some colleagues at Microsoft.

[fwik]

It should be possible to insert an explicit dotted circle character (U+25CC) and have it recognised as a valid base for combinations of marks by the Uniscribe Hebrew engine. I will bring this to the attention of some colleagues at Microsoft.

Thanks! That sounds like a simple, effective solution--let's hope they agree!

[gmoxley]

In the meantime, the workaround I've been using is to use the Ezra SIL font.

See attachment for an example.

[fwik]

In the meantime, the workaround I've been using is to use the Ezra SIL font.

Thanks for the helpful tip! That solves the immediate problem. In my case there's no dotted circle at all, apparently because we are running different versions of Uniscribe, but that's something I can live with.

[tiro_hudson]

The Ezra SIL font uses a glyph substitution hack to remove the dotted circle; the trouble is that it removes all dotted circles, even explicit ones.

[gmoxley]

Interesting. Using the "generic mark base" in the SBL Tiro Keyboard layout (ALTGR+0; unicode hex - 25CC) always shows an actual dotted circle for me. If it helps, my system info is as follows:

XP SP3
Office 2007 SP2
uniscribe versions:
usp10   1.0420.2600.5512 (xpsp.080413-2105)   396.50 KB (406,016 bytes)   8/4/2004 8:00 AM   Microsoft Corporation c:\winxp\system32\usp10.dll

usp10   1.0626.5756.0 (vista_rtm.061008-1400)   491.50 KB (503,296 bytes)   10/13/2006 7:51 PM   Microsoft Corporation   c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\usp10.dll

Here's a short tutorial I found on how to change uniscribe version: http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Replace_USP10dll



@fwik: I managed to reproduce your image with the black rectangular line using the U+25AC character. Check to be sure your using the U+25CC character.

Does anyone know why this formatting is possible in Ezra SIL, but not in SBL Hebrew?

[fwik]

Gmoxley, we're using the same version of Office (2007 SP2), and Office is using the same version of Uniscribe (1.0626.5756.0). (My system version of Uniscribe is different: 1.626.6001.18000.) As you suggest, my 25CC circle is apparently always displayed but, in line with what John implied earlier, it doesn't act as a combining base in Ezra SIL or any other font. So using the explicit circle in Ezra SIL I get:

Your 25CC circle combines?
Incidentally (somewhat off-topic), I noticed that Ezra SIL, unlike other fonts that display Hebrew, looks relatively lousy on the screen in Word (on the left in the picture below), but looks fine in Notepad (on the right, using the same font size). Does anyone know why that might be?

[gmoxley]

I apologize, I had forgotten about my workout around with this issue. Using the 25cc character with Ezra Sil does not work either. What I did was to simple hit the space bar, and then the vowel markings, accents, etc. This does, however, only work with Ezra Sil. See the attached picture for an example.

[fwik]

What I did was to simple hit the space bar, and then the vowel markings, accents, etc. This does, however, only work with Ezra Sil.

Thanks for the tip--it seems to work pretty nicely.

[littstles]

Thanks for the tips on this. I actually found this forum by searching for a topic similar to this one but I'll check out Ezra Sil to see if it can do what I am trying.

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