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Can Estrangela be converted?
#1
Hi,

I found the Paul Younan Peshitta word docs, and I am wondering if the font is convertible...

1.)Can Estrangela V1.1 be converted to Hebrew font?

2.) Can it be converted to George Kiraz Meltho?


If someone knows, please help.

~DC
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#2
It certainly could be converted with a program like FontForge to map to Hebrew Unicode, or Syriac Unicode.

It's just a matter of time and effort.

EDIT: Or did you mean, take the Estrangela written in the Peshitta Word docs and then convert it *into* Hebrew Unicode or Syriac Unicode?

That also is doable, but very time consuming.
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#3
~ Use the Estrangela in the Paul Younan Word docs and make it into Hebrew and Meltho.

Can FontForge do this?

I had trouble changing the Estrangela to any of the Meltho fonts....
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#4
I think I better understand now.

The Estrangela font is an ASCII encoded font where each ASCII character corresponds to an Estrangela glyph, with additional forms (initial, medial, final) represented by additional ASCII characters (i.e. if you want a final nun, you need to decide which form you need and then type the appropriate letter [abcdefg...etc.] it corresponds to).

Modern Hebrew fonts are Unicode where each Unicode character corresponds to a Hebrew glyph and additional forms are displayed via separate characters (nun or final nun must be chosen by the typer, but each have their own glyph slot; they don't correspond to ASCII characters at all).

The Meltho fonts are OpenType Unicode where each Unicode character corresponds to an Estrangela/Madnhaya/Serto glyph and additional forms are displayed using OpenType contextual rendering (they are determined when they are rendered by the operating system based upon context; the proper form of nun at the end of a word is chosen by the computer).

So, the only way to change Paul's Word documents into Hebrew Unicode or Meltho fonts is to change the encoding of the actual letters themselves into Hebrew Unicode or Syriac Unicode. Sadly, because of the structure of the Word documents, themselves, the only efficient way to do it is manually, as doing so programmatically (i.e. with a conversion program) is fraught with serious difficulties with how the text, itself, is formatted and typed into the document.

For example /shlama/ is represented as (if I remember correctly) ")ml$" in the Word document, and the Estrangela font changes those letters into Syriac letters for display. However, as far as the computer understands, they are *still* dollar-sign, lowercase-l, lowercase-m and left-parenthesis, not shin, lamed, mim, and alaf.

An alternative, is to actually fiddle with Paul's Estrangela font and copy and paste another font's glyphs over the Estrangela glyphs. This sort of thing you *can* do with FontForge, but it's also tedious and prone to glitch (when dealing with things like final forms, etc.). You would then need to distribute this new font along with the word document, otherwise it will not display properly. (In truth, this is really a band-aid solution.)

I hope I was clear enough. :-)
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#5
Isn't anyone familiar with Perl? You can save the word documents as text, read them as input to a Perl script and with regular expressions translate the ASCII characters into Unicode.

I'm a Perl and Java programmer by trade, so it can easily be done. In fact, I used Perl to translate the initial documents from UBS which were not in the Estrangelo font.

I don't have the time to do it, but I would suggest consulting an experienced Perl programmer if you want this script written.

+Shamasha
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#6
Doing a PERL, PHP, Python, or even a Node.js script to simply extract the text and convert it greatly simplifies the problem, but I was assuming that the formatting was something needed intact. :-)
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#7
SteveCaruso Wrote:Doing a PERL, PHP, Python, or even a Node.js script to simply extract the text and convert it greatly simplifies the problem, but I was assuming that the formatting was something needed intact. :-)

I'm not suggesting using anything to extract the text. You simply save the file as a text file. It's only ASCII characters. You can open it in notepad, not a big deal.

You then read the text file into a Perl script, and using a regular expression along with a translation table, you can convert them to Japanese double-byte encoding if you'd like. It's a simple process.

I converted the original files by using a quick Perl script to translate whatever encoding it was in by the UBS to my preferred windows font. You can then reimport back into word, or whatever you want.

There's no need to look for a tool to do this. Just a programmer. Again, I would volunteer if I had the free time and a good reason why it was necessary.
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#8
Hi, Paul, where did you find the UBS text?

And what type of encoding was the UBS text?

Perhaps the UBS would be easier...
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#9
DrawCloser Wrote:Hi, Paul, where did you find the UBS text?

And what type of encoding was the UBS text?

Perhaps the UBS would be easier...

I honestly don't remember, it's been so long.
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#10
Here's the whole thing in unicode:

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/RightT...frames.htm

+Shamasha
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#11
So, the stuff from the link you provided,

-can it be converted to Hebrew *Unicode* and Arabic *Unicode* script?

- And is that UBS text or George Kiraz text? And what are there vowel markings doing there?
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