B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Genesis 1:1
בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

I see that the hiriq in the dual spelling of הַשָּׁמַיִם is floating in fonts used to render online presentations of the pointed text while the hiriq is on the plane with the rest of the points in printed texts such as BHS. The hiriq is represented by the unicode point 05b4.

Online example:
http://www.tanach.us/Server.html?Gen1:1 ... height=150

Curiously, the dagesh in וַיִּקְרָא found in Gen 1:5 forces the hiriq to the expected plane.

Genesis 1:5
וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד׃

Is there a work around for this which would put the hiriq on the expected plane in all places?

Mark,

I'm not sure what you are seeing. I have SBL Hebrew to render Hebrew text, and I see no problems with הַשָּׁמַיִם. Perhaps it is a font/rendering engine issue. What OS and font are you using?

BTW, the tag expects SBL Hebrew. I deliberately set it up that way, since, IMO, SBL Hebrew does the best job of rendering the Hebrew Bible. See the discussion here.

Kirk Lowery wrote:I'm not sure what you are seeing. I have SBL Hebrew to render Hebrew text, and I see no problems with הַשָּׁמַיִם. Perhaps it is a font/rendering engine issue. What OS and font are you using?

Thank you, Kirk, for your assistance. I'm running Windows XP SP3 and Chrome Version 33.0.1750.146 m. I have SBL Hebrew font installed and Chrome reports that it is using SBL Hebrew to render the text in question.

Immediately below is a screen shot of what I am seeing taken directly from the tanach.us server which shows the floating hiriq in "the heavens":



Note that the developer's panel in chrome tells me that the browser is in fact rendering the text with SBL Hebrew.

Now, here is a screen shot of Gen 1:5 which shows the hiriq on the expected plane when the yod has a dagesh in "and he called".




I have been using the SBL Hebrew font for a long time, before that I used SIL's Ezra. I'm pretty well versed in the rendering of unicode fonts due to the implementation of Biblical Languages on my personal website which expects SBL Hebrew itself. Likewise, I am keenly aware of the challenges of the cross-browser/OS issues that must be addressed in creating a uniform web experience for surfers. I am greatly pleased with the beautiful way in which SBL Hebrew renders the text and until now thought that it was a perfect match to the printed text in BHS. This is not a big issue for me -- just a curious event.

Does your hiriq placement differ from these pictured? What is your OS/browser?

Mark,

Until you posted the screenshot, I did not understand to what you were referring. Yes, that hiriq is clearly misplaced. I note that you are using XP. I wonder what version of Uniscribe (USP10.dll) is being used? There have been many updates to the renderer since XP (SP3)...

I use the latest Google browser, both under Windows 7 and in Ubuntu 13.10 (in a VMware box). I've checked; no issues.

I applaud your long-time use of SBL Hebrew! Make sure you're using the latest SBL Hebrew version. There have been updates to it.

Thank you, Kirk. From your suggestions I was able to correct the problem. The issue was the date/version of my SBL Hebrew font. I had version (1.11) installed from 2005 Apparently, I had been using it for a long time.

The current font is from 2010 version (1.56a).

Here is the link for others who might want access to the latest version:

http://www.sbl-site.org/educational/Bib ... ebrew.aspx

Mark,

Glad it was such an easy fix!

Kirk Lowery wrote:Mark,

Until you posted the screenshot, I did not understand to what you were referring. Yes, that hiriq is clearly misplaced. I note that you are using XP. I wonder what version of Uniscribe (USP10.dll) is being used? There have been many updates to the renderer since XP (SP3)...

I use the latest Google browser, both under Windows 7 and in Ubuntu 13.10 (in a VMware box). I've checked; no issues.

I applaud your long-time use of SBL Hebrew! Make sure you're using the latest SBL Hebrew version. There have been updates to it.

The Society has released a new font: SBL BibLit. It is to replace both SBL Greek and SBL Hebrew, as it supports both. I would suggest adding SBL BibLit to the font family in the CSS on the forum. It is more up-to-date.

As it is, I noticed the raised hirek recently when viewing text in Times New Roman on the Windows 7 platform. Viewing the same text on my Windows 8.1 tablet did not display a raised vowel. It was/is completely normal. I don't know what the issue is, since it didn't use to be that way on Windows 7 with Times New Roman. :shrug:

The reason, by the way, that the hirik in the word ויקרא is in the normal place is because of the dagesh, which forces the system to place it in the normal position. It's not just in the dual of שמים. It's in any place in which there is a hirik under a yod without dagesh, such as in יִשְׂרָאֵל.

This is what it looks like on the Windows 7 (no SBL fonts) system:

Jason,

<facepalm> Of course. I knew that. I did! </facepalm>

BibLit includes all the code points of SBL Hebrew and SBL Greek. I will adjust the bbcode, as well as change the references in the Questions forum. Thanks for the recommendation!

Jason,

Well, that's interesting. When I installed and then changed the code to use SBL BibLit, the misplaced hiriq under the yod returned! Changing back to SBL Hebrew placed the hiriq correctly.

Could you please check on your system to see? I am leaving the code pointing to SBL BibLit, and I need to have verification.

Otherwise, I'm going to try to make a bug report to the typographer...

Later: I confirm the problem on both the Windows 7 Pro and Linux (Ubuntu) OSes, using BibLit.