Hebrew fonts?

My point is that its okay to move the trop downwards.

Downwards? I must reread what you wrote, as I think I misunderstood.

If you are going to move the trop down, then put the nikud back in the correct position if possible. If not, then move the trop down and move the nikud. However, I never move the nikud by much and certainly dont want a nikud in the middle of the resh instead of the foot.

Remember that by design, the trop is thinner than the nikud (and the nikud thinner than the letters) therefore it will never stand out.

Adil Allawi of Ready Set Go in London showed his Koran with floating layers where one group of nikkud like marks were in black, and the second group of taam like marks were in red. The layers could be turned on or off at will, to aid the reader. Hence the distinction between the taam and nikkud need only to be by color, not by thickness or by higher or lower position.

The purpose of thickness is to draw attention that the thicker one is greater than the thinner. I think this is a wrong message to send. One is not more important than the other. Distinguish between them simply by color.

Well thats a little more complicated because there are many different opinions. For example, using Israeli pronunciation, do you say tzahorayim (according to Sefardi masora) or tzohorayim (according to ashkenazi masora) again when I say ashkenazi masora, that means Shabbat and Chochma, but it means that the first kamatz becomes a kamatz katan.

Also, within tefilla, different parts of tefilla follow different rules, some parts follow the grammatical rules of the tanakh, some follow that of the rishonim and some follow that of modern hebrew. We have a team of rabbinical grammarians doing this for the new Koren Siddur for the USA, where the siddur has kamatz katan, shva na and metegs throughout the siddur.

Shva na follows a simple rule that no one debate. Farkash is working on making the entire Tanach with shva nas.

Now regarding komatz katan according to various views, this is no problem in software; only in print form.

How do you pay the team, by the hour?

when you say automatically, what do you mean? Do you mean that the font can examine to see the shape of the nikud and team and then adjust accordingly, or do you have to tell it all the combinations?

Good question. Not exactly. Automatically means the font determines the narrow width factor of the letter, and then rearranges the entire of nikkud taam maybe meteg in a semblance to fit under the narrow.

Then, this is modified by rules, determined by the particular kind of nikkud, taam, maybe meteg.

Do you understand.

An appended data base could then tell the font that under those circumstances a slightly different fitting should be used instead. That's my contribution.

Why do you assume somebody will mechalel shabbos. Thats not very generous of you.

If a secular Jew in Israel or anywhere violate the Shabbat, he or she is not mechalel Shabbos, rather he or she simply has not learned how beautiful it is to observe. That's the chovat gavra (ask Harbs); but if he or she produced a work on Shabbos, the work must be destroyed (chovas hoftza) - see Shulchan Orech.

Remember, Raphael, I'm a Lubavitcher who taught to love and mekarev every Jew.

(unless you dont like the mizrachi component)

Listen, if the Satmar get upset and everything, I'll buy you some marshmellows. :)

>I don't understand what you're saying. You seem here to contradict every you said about Koren. If I understand you correctly, you'd rather daven in a shul with the old kind of Vilna chumashim. Are you saying this?

LOL. No, Im saying that I work for Koren and Im working on the digitisation of the Koren font. When Im in shul, Im supposed to be concentrating on davening, but of course Im using a Koren siddur or a Koren Chumash so when I see things that werent done so well, I start thinking, "oooh, I must program that mercha better" which of course is working on shabbat!

I thought we agreed that I had a sense of humour.

I know that Mr Koren was famous for his Thursday evening tactic. In Israel Friday isnt a workday and we work Sunday instead. At the end of the day on Thursday, he would collect all the work from every employee and take it home, only to return it on Sunday morning, lest anybody should accidentally come to work on Shabbat and work on the Koren Tanakh.

Mr. Koren was frum, even very modern?

I wonder that happened when they printed Bibles in the past. Probably not.

If non-Jews printed it on Shabbat, there is no violation of Shabbat, unless the printing Jewish owned property.

I doubt if the Romm brother the Romm widow allowed their non-Jewish worker to use their printing on Shabbat. No matter what people say about them and their modern ways. So, they didn't have peyot!

Im not sure Im quite so holy as you. I have a problem in shul when davening and following the leyning because of course its all in the Koren font (our shul only allows Koren Chumashim and siddurim)

I don't understand what you're saying. You seem here to contradict every you said about Koren. If I understand you correctly, you'd rather daven in a shul with the old kind of Vilna chumashim. Are you saying this?

and of course Im there going, oy, the mercha should have been put lower (yes, Im serious).

Isn't mercha the curly taam with the right side pointing up, and the left side pointing to the left?

If so, I would center the side pointing up under the bottom tip, and allow the left side to be further left of the bottom tip. This is a graphic decision.

I would not center the entire width of the merca under the bottom tip.

>That is very correct of you. I agree with you. Lets assume everything now is hunky dory with Tzvika. But if Tzvika violated the Shabbat in creating his Hadasa for ArtScroll, his teshuva is not accepted until all of ArtScroll's books are burned.

Again we are getting into religious debate now. I thought we agreed that this wasnt the place for that.

>I carefully didn't say that. To Hallel on a day the Sages did not authorize is against halacha, even if one believe sincerely that G-d made a miracle in creating the State. Otherwise, we would add Hallel to every day of our prayers, because the Talmud attests to the fact it is a miracle for us each day just to wake. Since there have to rules, so no Hallel is said on Yom Azmaoot. People in Gush no loner say Hallel on Yom Kippur.

Thank you for proving my point. So you wouldnt buy our siddur and neither do the charedim of bney brak. But they buy our tanakh because they accept that it is accurate. So perhaps you wont call it treif, but you think it goes against halakha so it amounts to the same thing. Anyway, back to the point that the Koren Tanakh is widely accepted amongst all Jews. (Incidentally the Siddur is typeset in a different Koren font that Koren created for the siddur).