ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N1740
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DATE: 1998-05-09 | |
DOC TYPE: | Expert contribution |
TITLE: | Title: Proposal to add the Hebrew Tetragrammaton to ISO/IEC 10646 |
SOURCE: | Mark E. Shoulson; Michael Everson, EGT (IE) |
PROJECT: | JTC1.02.18.01 |
STATUS: | Proposal. |
ACTION ID: | FYI |
DUE DATE: | -- |
DISTRIBUTION: | Worldwide |
MEDIUM: | Paper and web |
NO. OF PAGES: | 4 |
A. Administrative |
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1. Title | Proposal to add the Hebrew Tetragrammaton to ISO/IEC 10646 |
2. Requester's name | Mark E. Shoulson; Michael Everson |
3. Requester type | Expert contribution |
4. Submission date | 1998-05-09 |
5. Requester's reference | |
6a. Completion | This is a complete proposal. |
6b. More information to be provided? | No |
B. Technical -- General |
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1a. New character? Name? | Yes. HEBREW TETRAGRAMMATON. |
1b. Addition of characters to existing block? Name? | Yes. Hebrew. |
2. Number of characters | 1 |
3. Proposed category | Category A |
4. Proposed level of implementation and rationale | Level 1. The proposed character is a single non-combining character with many glyph variants. |
5a. Character names included in proposal? | Yes |
5b. Character names in accordance with guidelines? | Yes |
5c. Character shapes reviewable? | Yes |
6a. Who will provide computerized font? | Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta. |
6b. Font currently available? | Yes: Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta. |
6c. Font format? | TrueType |
7a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts, etc.) provided? | Yes. |
7b. Are published examples (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources) of use of proposed characters attached? | Yes. |
8. Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing? | No |
C. Technical -- Justification |
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1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before? | No |
2. Contact with the user community? | Yes. Hebrew Language Mailing List (heblang@shamash.org), Rabbi Jeff Bienenfeld, Rabbi Ronald Schwarzberg, Rabbi David J. Schnall, Rabbi Neil N. Winkler. |
3. Information on the user community? | Jews, students of Judaism and Jewish literature, students of religion, publishers of Bibles and biblical literature. |
4a. The context of use for the proposed characters? | High frequency character in religious texts, including prayer books, Bibles, etc. |
4b. Reference | |
5a. Proposed characters in current use? | Yes |
5b. Where? | The HEBREW TETRAGRAMMATON is a unique sign used to represent the name of God. We have not found it to date in a coded character set. However, the coding of this character solves a serious lexical problem with regard to Hebrew texts which cannot be solved in any other way. See below for further justification. |
6a. Characters should be encoded entirely in BMP? | Yes. Position U+05FF is proposed. |
6b. Rationale | All Hebrew characters are in the BMP. |
7. Should characters be kept in a continuous range? | Not applicable; single character |
8a. Can the characters be considered a presentation form of an existing character or character sequence? | Yes, in principle, but it can be considered a presentation form of about twenty different strings of characters. |
8b. Where? | 05D9+05B0+05D4+05B9+05D5+05B8+05D4, or 05D9+05D4+05D5+05D4, or 05D3+05F3, or 05D4+05F3, or 05D9+05D9, or 05D9+05B0+05D9+05B8, or 05D9+05D9+05D9, or 05D9+05D0+05D4+05D3+05D5+05E0+05D4+05D9, et al.... |
8c. Reference | Attached proposal and rationale explains why a new code position is required, and why the particular sequences given above are not adequate to represent this entity-in-text. |
9a. Can any of the characters be considered to be similar (in appearance or function) to an existing character? | Only to U+FDF2, ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM, with which it would not be possible to unify this character as the two belong to different scripts. |
9b. Where? | N/A |
9c. Reference | Attached proposal and rationale as to why a new code position is required. |
10a. Combining characters or use of composite sequences included? | No |
10b. List of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images provided? | No |
11. Characters with any special properties such as control function, etc. included? | No |
D. SC2/WG2 AdministrativeTo be completed by SC2/WG2 |
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1. Relevant SC 2/WG 2 document numbers: | |
2. Status (list of meeting number and corresponding action or disposition) | |
3. Additional contact to user communities, liaison organizations etc. | |
4. Assigned category and assigned priority/time frame | |
Other Comments |
The Tetragrammaton may be represented with its usual vocalization:
Because the vocalization doesn't indicate the pronunciation of the
Explicit Name itself, some texts present only the letters YOD-HE-VAV-HE
without vowels (even when the rest of the text is pointed).
From the D
ead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, Library. (http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/deadsea.scrolls.exhibit/full-images/psalm-b.gif
A>)
From the Habakuk Roll (Haarmann 1990:311) | |
For various Cabbalistic reasons, the vowels are changed in some contexts,
though of course the pronunciation is unaffected:
The point is, the word which is represented in each of the texts is always understood to be the same word, regardless of the glyphs used to represent it. Encoding it as an entity and leaving the representation to the font is the best way of representing this entity-in-text.
Consider the following sentences:
Consider the following text, as an example (Psalm 117):
UCS should treat the Tetragrammaton as a unique Hebrew ligature analogous to the ARABIC LIGATURE ALLAH ISOLATED FORM, leaving the glyph representation to a choice of font vis à vis this character.