9 Aug 89 JUDAIC STUDIES #20 8 Av 49 BS"D Connecting geographically & otherwise disparate groups with a common interest in the study of Judaica. Edited by Y. Greenbaum CONTENTS 1) Obtaining an Electronic Tanach 2) More on WordPerfect 1) Obtaining an Electronic Tanach From: Bob Kraft (CCAT) Date: Tue, 8 August 1989 0920-EST With regard to the question of "public domain" TaNaK, I assume that what is meant is "inexpensive" or even "free." The BHS text that is distributed from the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT) at Penn, with the permission of the copyright holder of the printed version, the United Bible Societies (UBS), is NOT free if it is obtained from CCAT or one of its distributors, since there is expense involved in making and sending copies -- as a non-profit organization, we calculate this price to meet real expense, and it comes to about $50 for the 10 diskettes (with some utilities) for the electronic BHS. We do, however, permit purchasers to pass the text along to other users with the only stipulation that the new recipients also sign our USERS AGREEMENT and register it with CCAT. Thus the text may be obtained at no cost by responsible parties from someone who has obtained it responsibly (i.e. by registering a USERS AGREEMENT). Why bother with the USERS AGREEMENT? Because it is part of our agreement with UBS to keep track of distribution, and it reminds the user that this is not "public domain" material that can be used in any way (e.g. published in competition with the copyright holder's text!), and it also reminds the user that electronic publications also need to be "footnoted" just as hardcopy material should be. Thus we at CCAT feel that we are able to discharge our responsibilities as an educational and research center by providing users with high quality and low cost electronic materials. But the system can only continue to work if users meet their responsibility of recognizing the legal/ownership situation and abiding by the USER AGREEMENT conditions (which include registering the USER AGREEMENT with CCAT!). From: John Bloom Date: Thu, 3 Aug 89 18:53 EDT The Tanach can be obtained as a part of the CATSS database project at the University of Pennsylvania. The CATSS database encodes the Hebrew text with full vowel pointing and breathing marks (niqud, etc.) in a 7-bit ASCII format. Thus, if you try to use it directly, you see gibberish on screen. The text can be converted to either Nota Bene or to Multi-Lingual Scholar, using utilities that are a little slow. Either NB or MLS are fine word-processors for doing bi-lingual word processing. MLS gives you more flexibility in printing, and displays the niqud (vowel-points) under the consonants, where they belong. However, the problem is not so much the programs (either costs less than $500), but the computer that is required to run them. Both require EGA or better to really look good (although MLS will run with hercules); they also run VERY slowly, unless you have an AT or an accelerator board. They also print best to the HP laser printer (accept no substitutes), or to a 24-pin dot matrix. 9-pin looks pretty rough. Of course, you also should have a hard disk with about 5 free MB for the Tanach and about 2-3 free MB for MLS or NB. If you want to do Hebrew with a floppy-only XT PC with MDA graphics, it will not happen. As far as EGA goes, this need not mean color. Paradise makes a nice monochrome EGA card (about $200) which will save the cost of a good color monitor. However, if you want any decent performance at all, the AT or accelerator is necessary. I hope that this is a helpful answer... that is, if you have the PC power, the answer is yes. Feel free to contact me for more details on the above. From: Bob Kraft (CCAT, CATSS, Religious Studies) Date: Wednesday, 9 August 1989 0015-EST Yes, John Bloom is referring to the same thing as my note. The project that originally pulled all this stuff together was/is called Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint Studies (CATSS), co-directed by Emanuel Tov and myself. The umbrella organization created at Penn to administer the distribution of data, etc., is the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts (CCAT). Probably it would be most accurate to refer to the distribution of the electronic BHS as from CCAT/CATSS. The text itself was initially produced with funding from the Packard Foundation by Van Parunak (U. Michigan) and Dick Whitaker (then working at Claremont), and is thus called the "Michigan-Claremont" text. The final stages of verification and massaging were done through CATSS under Emanuel Tov's direction, and the text is now being maintained by Alan Groves at Westminster Theological Seminary, while he also produces a morphologically tagged version (using various earlier efforts as well as his own). The morphed version is "nearly ready." As for the coding system to which John Bloom refers, and to software and hardware configurations to use the text, it should be noted at the outset that the text is included on the CD-ROM produced by the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) in cooperation with CCAT in 1987, and can be obtained with a large variety of other biblical and related materials for virtually no cost on that medium. That CD-ROM can be read and displayed in the appropriate languages (at least for Hebrew and Greek) on the IBYCUS Scholarly Computer most easily, and with somewhat more difficulty on both Apple Macintosh and on IBM types. Indeed, software designed specifically to work with the Hebrew and Greek biblical materials on CD-ROM for the IBM world is available from John Baima and is called "LBase" (Linguistic Analysis focus). LBase can work with either the Old Greek ("Septuagint") or the Hebrew separately, or with the parallel aligned files created by Tov's branch of CATSS, or with the morphologically analyzed Greek. It displays nicely on screen, can be printed, etc. John Baima is available on e-mail, and perhaps is a member of this group. I hope that helps clarify some of the basic issues and history of some of the biblical data production and distribution. Yechiel responds- Thank you both very much for a well-informed discussion of an extremely basic resource. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the morphed Hebrew. 2) More on WordPerfect From: Ron Kiener Date: Thu, 3 Aug 89 21:08 EST I have posted a file, WPHEBR.ZIP, on Compuserve's WordPerfect Support Group Forum, Library 0, which provides a keyboard definition for Hebrew (HEBREW.WPK) and a set of macros to move back and forth between Hebrew and English keyboards. This Hebrew Keyboard definition allows for the typing of up to a line of Hebrew text in logical order. It is designed to run according to the Hebrew character map used in Israel. I also include a second keyboard definition, LBEHEB.WPK, designed to work with M.A.P. Systems' Lines, Boxes, Etc., an add-in program for WP 5.0 which follows the unfortunate official character map of WP 5.0 (Character Set 9). The advantage here is that by using Lines, Boxes, Etc., the View Document screen *actually displays Hebrew*! I will bring copies of this file to the Congress, and happily make them available to anyone who wants. Avrum is correct: all announcements of WP 5.0 in Hebrew are vaporware projections. Now that PC Week reports that WP 5.1 is in beta testing, we should all wait with ever greater scepticism. I seem to remember similar announcements concerning a Hebrew version of WP 4.2 some years ago, which proved totally groundless.