Subject: Re: Introduction - Ethiopic texts

From: [email-masked] (bakker)
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 10:11:59 +0100

On 13/1/97 Patrick Durusau of Information Technology wrote:

>Magaret,
>
>I am very interested in your work with original Ethiopic texts as
>described in your post to the TC-List. I am the chair of the newly
>formed SBL Seminar on Electronic Standards for Biblical Language Texts,
>which will be addressing the problems faced by authors and publishers
>working with biblical language materials.
>
>One of the first goals of the seminar is to produce Writing System
>Declarations, which are formal ways of defining how non-Western
>characters will be represented in a text.  If the standard keyboard
>lacked the key for "$", the Writing System Declaration could specify
>that sign would be written as "&dollar;" and when the text was processed
>for printing or display, appropriate software would display the symbol
>"$".  The steering committee will be meeting later this month to decide
>which biblical languages should be described first and I was wondering
>if you would be interested in specifying the character set we would need
>for Ethiopic texts?  It is not necessary for you to cast it into the
>technical form needed for creation of the Writing System Declaration,
>but such work does require a scholar familiar with the language and
>script to be described.

Dear Patrick,

If you need help with the two Old Slavic (or Old Church Slavonic) writing
systems, the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic alphabets, please let me know. We
have built up quite some experience in encoding and collating Slavic, Greek
and even Armenian NT MSS.

Michael Bakker
Slavic Seminar
University of Amsterdam

---

From: Patrick Durusau <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 11:17:43 -0500

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your message!  I had planned a somewhat more formal notice of
our activities after the seminar meeting later this month but my mailer
failed yesterday and sent that note to the list instead of Margaret. 
Yes, we would be very interested in assistance with Old Slavic (both
alphabets).  Not to mention your experience encoding and collating
Slavic, Greek and even Armenian NT MSS.  Did you have a project manual
or other listing of the choices to be made when working with a
manuscript?  It is one of the areas that needs the most work from an
extension of the TEI Guidelines standpoint. I will let you know how we
organize the coordination of the various parts of the seminar the week
of Feburary 3-7, 1997. Thanks again.

Patrick

Patrick Durusau
Information Technology
Scholars Press
[email-masked]
Chair, SBL Seminar on Electronic Standards for
Biblical Language Texts