Bugs typing/copying Unicode Hebrew/Hieroglyphics in User Notes

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi,

 

I just got Accordance 11, and found bugs with typing/copying Unicode Hebrew and Hieroglyphics in the Notes.

 

1. If I copy from HMT-4 and paste it into a Note, it doesn't all display correctly; see Screenshot 1. If I select it and change to another Unicode font, it looks even worse; see Screenshot 2.

 

 

 

2. If I change the Windows language to Hebrew, type a Hebrew word, and then the spacebar, the cursor goes to the right of the Hebrew word.

 

3. If I scroll and choose a different font, I don't get the font I selected - e.g., I selected Ezra SIL, and Estranglo Talada showed up in the box (which is nine above Ezra SIL on my fonts list). If I choose TimesNewRoman, Stencil shows up, again, nine above TNR on my font list.

 

4. My Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphic fonts do not copy and paste into the notes. I also can't type hieroglyphics in the notes like I can in MS Word, Libre Office, etc.

 

5. I know it isn't a bug, but it takes a while to scroll through the fonts; could you add a bar to click and hold so we could scroll through our font more quickly?

 

Thanks.

 

Michel

 

Screenshot 1.pdf

Screenshot 2.pdf

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Michel,

 

Item 1 I cannot repro. I'm using Cardo and I use Unicode export. I would have assumed you used Unicode export also, but I note that your notes file seems to be using Yehudit in the first image which I believe is not Unicode.

 

Item 3 I can and logged a separate issue concerning it another issue in http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14314

 

Item 5 would be handy as would the ability to begin typing the letters in a font name and have the menu relocate to that items beginning with those characters.

 

Item 2 and 4 are a bit hard for me to test. I do not (yet) read Hebrew and while I have Hebrew keyboards set up I do not know if I can set the Windows lang to Hebrew. I have never tried Hieroglyphics at all I'm afraid so I would have work to do there.

 

Regarding 2 if you mean that typing Hebrew text from a Hebrew keyboard doesn't place the cursor on the left where the characters appear that's true enough. And its worse if you use something like Cardo where the new characters appear on the right also. With Yehudit they consistently appears on the left hand end of the line.

 

Tx

D

Edited November 9, 2014 by Daniel Semler

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

 

 

Hi,

 

I just got Accordance 11, and found bugs with typing/copying Unicode Hebrew and Hieroglyphics in the Notes.

 

1. If I copy from HMT-4 and paste it into a Note, it doesn't all display correctly; see Screenshot 1. If I select it and change to another Unicode font, it looks even worse; see Screenshot 2.

 

 

 

2. If I change the Windows language to Hebrew, type a Hebrew word, and then the spacebar, the cursor goes to the right of the Hebrew word.

 

3. If I scroll and choose a different font, I don't get the font I selected - e.g., I selected Ezra SIL, and Estranglo Talada showed up in the box (which is nine above Ezra SIL on my fonts list). If I choose TimesNewRoman, Stencil shows up, again, nine above TNR on my font list.

 

4. My Unicode Egyptian Hieroglyphic fonts do not copy and paste into the notes. I also can't type hieroglyphics in the notes like I can in MS Word, Libre Office, etc.

 

5. I know it isn't a bug, but it takes a while to scroll through the fonts; could you add a bar to click and hold so we could scroll through our font more quickly?

 

Thanks.

 

Michel

 

 

 

Did you make a custom keyboard layout for all the hieroglyphs from scratch? If so, nicely done! I've been making a few myself for Ugaritic, Phoenician and Samaritan, but I haven't dared making layouts for syllabic cuneiform and hieroglyphs yet..

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Daniel,

 

Regarding #1, you assumed correctly. But when I cut and paste Hebrew within Accordance, it changes the font to Yehudit in the Notes. When I select it and change to a Unicode font, it is even more garbled.

 

Edit: I should add that I also exported Gen 1:1-2 to MS Word. But when I copied that Hebrew Unicode text back into the User Notes, Accordance changed it Yehudit, and it was garbled again. This was not the case in Acc 10.

 

Regarding #2, I do mean that.

 

Regarding #4, I know that most don't know how to type Unicode hieroglyphs.

 

Thanks for checking.

 

Michel

Edited November 9, 2014 by Michel Gilbert

[Michel Gilbert]

 

 

Did you make a custom keyboard layout for all the hieroglyphs from scratch? If so, nicely done! I've been making a few myself for Ugaritic, Phoenician and Samaritan, but I haven't dared making layouts for syllabic cuneiform and hieroglyphs yet..

 

 

Hi,

 

I use Tavultesoft Keyman Desktop 9.0 with the Unicode Hieroglyphic keyboard at

 

http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/downloads/keyboards/search.php?Submit=search&Search=hieroglyphic&x=40&y=18

 

You can see the Unicode hieroglyphic keyboard documentation at

 

http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyboarddownloads/%7BA00E724E-B133-47A8-BBA3-3C2E613925E6%7D/Hieroglyphic%20Keyboard%20Help.pdf

 

I map Ugaritic, etc. keyboards as close to Ezra SIL Unicode 2.4 as possible. It's just what I am familiar with.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

Thank you very much for the info! I did the exact same thing when I mapped my other keyboards because of the familiarity with Ezra SIL.

 

And I must say that the hieroglyph layout is exceptionally sophisticated - The guy who made this is a genuine craftsman! But if memory serves, Tavultesoft's Keyman Desktop doesn't work on Mac, though. Still, it's a very good thing that the layout is there in spite of compatibility issues. I wonder if there's one out there for Sumero-akkadian as well.

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

Edited November 9, 2014 by Pchris

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi,

 

The only one I'm familiar with is Shibboleth from Logos at

 

https://www.logos.com/shibboleth

 

It's not a keyboard, but you can enter by Unicode value, Labat, or Borger number, and copy and paste into word processors.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

 

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

That is a very interesting tool! It is a pity that it doesn't work on Mac, but I'd rather have that it's available at least to some than none at all. Thanks again!

 

*EDIT*

 

Oh, and do forgive the thread derail on my part. When I read that you actually typed hieroglyphs, I just had to ask how you acquired that layout.

Edited November 9, 2014 by Pchris

[Michel Gilbert]

Thank you very much for the info! I did the exact same thing when I mapped my other keyboards because of the familiarity with Ezra SIL.

 

And I must say that the hieroglyph layout is exceptionally sophisticated - The guy who made this is a genuine craftsman! But if memory serves, Tavultesoft's Keyman Desktop doesn't work on Mac, though. Still, it's a very good thing that the layout is there in spite of compatibility issues. I wonder if there's one out there for Sumero-akkadian as well.

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

 

Hi,

If you have an iPad, you can use Keyman and/or Unicode Pad for Egyptian and Akkadian.

Keyman is available with the Egyptian (Ancient) Hieroglyphic keyboard, see

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keyman/id721595078

Also, Unicode Pad has the Unicode Glyphs for Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Cuneiform, see

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/unicode-pad/id374098312?mt=8

It might be worth it to type hieroglyphs and cuneiform on an iPad, save it in Pages or something else, and send it to your Mac via Dropbox, etc.

Also, see my post "Installing custom fonts and keyboards on iPad" at

http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12975

Regards,

Michel

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

Thank you again for telling me about these apps - I don't have an iPad, but I do have an iPhone, which seems to be good enough.

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

[Elijah]

I used the Greek Polytonic keyboard layout that comes with windows and customized it using KbdEdit to fit the German keyboard layout (e.g. z should match ζ).

In Accordance 10 I could write in the User Notes window using that keyboard layout (I don't remember if every key worked), but in Accordance 11 I cannot use letters like ö, ä or + anymore that are used for accent / breathing marks.

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Elijah,

 

I tried my German keyboard, and I also couldn't type Unicode ö or ä in the User Notes. But at least I could cut and paste Unicode ö, ä , etc. from my word processor into the Notes.

 

I can't even cut and paste Unicode Hebrew, other semitic languages, or hieroglyphs. They are not all right to left languages, so the problem is not confined to complex scripts. My hieroglyph font positions glyphs left to right.

 

Their Feature Tour said, "User Tools fully support Unicode, so notes can be in any language." Any Windows user would assume this means choosing a language and keyboard, typing, selecting text and changing to another Unicode font, and copying and pasting seamlessly between programs that support Unicode, i.e., between practically every Windows program.

 

I assume/know(?) they are either working on this now, or they will as soon as they can.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

Edited November 10, 2014 by Michel Gilbert

[Joel Brown]

Michel:

 

Heiroglyphics are in the extended Unicode pages, requiring UTF32+. These aren't supported just yet, though we may see what we can do to add support sooner rather than later.

 

Typing characters in the german and other language keyboards was just improved in the (just posted) 11.0.1 update. We have a more proper fix coming in a few days, but we didn't want to hold up all of the other issues fixed in 11.0.1.

 

Finally, you are correct that direct copy and paste of normal Hebrew doesn't seem to be working. This was working just before release, so something must have been broken at the very end, that we'll get fixed asap. As a workaround, if you click to another program and come back, the pasting of the Hebrew works. So, something like "Copy -> click to Windows desktop -> Click to User Notes Window -> Paste" should work better as a temporary fix.

 

So, long story short, just about everything should be improved in 11.0.2, except likely support of Hieroglyphics.

[Michel Gilbert]

Hi Joel,

 

My post was really about Unicode in general. I understand that hieroglyph support is low on the priority list, but as Unicode support improves, it may just happen naturally.

 

The Unicode issue is the only one preventing me from doing most of my work in Accordance. Since it is only a matter of when and not if you'll fix it, I know that I will be working mostly in Acc soon.

 

You have wonderful customer service. I can't thank you enough for addressing the homograph issue, and for addressing the Unicode one.

 

Regards,

 

Michel

[Outis]

Hello,

With the newest update within Accordance the user notes has become difficult to work with. While there are many improvements in the greek, there are substantive problems in the Hebrew. When one copies from a Hebrew lexicon or grammar there are three problems:

1. Formatting errors (bold and regular weight are mixed up)
2. Order errors (especially with parentheses the Hebrew characters and english ones are transposed)
3. Font errors (a line should continue with english, but instead the hebrew font takes over, rendering a bunch of nonsensical letters. This happens in the greek too)

As an example, please have a look at this screenshot in my notes taken from HALOT:

HALOT.tiff

I really do appreciate the improvements made in the newest update to Accordance. But these copy and paste problems are quite frustrating. I'm having to spend lots of time on things I never had to spend time correcting in all the previous versions.

[Outis]

As to the other parts of this discussion about keyboard layouts, here's what I've found on the mac side of things:

 

1. If I need to make or rework a keyboard layout, I use Ukulele (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/14495/ukelele). I was able to use the quite functional Greek/Coptic font, Antinoou (http://www.evertype.com/fonts/coptic/) but keep the same key bindings as Sylvanus (at least for the most part).
2. I use the Sophokeys layout for minuscule greek (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16929/sophokeys-polytonic-greek)
3. If you go to the system preferences and type in "language input" in the search field you'll get to the area where you can change the languages (and keyboards) with a keystroke (command-space bar, etc).
4. Finally, don't forget about the "character viewer" and "keyboard viewer". You can find some interesting glyphs/symbols that way.

I realize that some (most) of this might be too applicable to the windows guys. But if you're using a mac and need to make your own keyboard with your own obscure font, Ukulele is a good app.

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

I used Ukelele myself when I made my Ugaritic and Phoenician keyboard layout for Mac. I can only recommend it, too. It's a nice, user friendly app. There is also a keyboard layout editor for Windows called "Microsoft keyboard layout creator". Somewhat less intuitive than Ukelele, it works in the same manner. And they're both free!

[A.D. Riddle]

For typing cuneiform, here are a couple of tools that help.

 

(1) Cuneify

http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/cuneiformrevealed/cuneify/

 

(2) altBab Picker

http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/picker/pickeraltbab.html

 

(3) Shibboleth (Windows only, I think)

https://www.logos.com/shibboleth

 

 

For building keyboard layouts for Mac, Ukelele (mentioned by Pchris) is free and pretty easy to use.

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=ukelele&highlight=ukelele

 

A.D.

For Egyptian hieroglyphs, JShesh is an awesome tool.

http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/

 

It does not produce Unicode output, however, so it does not address the problem Michel would like answered.

 

A.D.

[Peter Brylov Christensen]

For typing cuneiform, here are a couple of tools that help.

 

(1) Cuneify

http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/cuneiformrevealed/cuneify/

 

(2) altBab Picker

http://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/picker/pickeraltbab.html

 

(3) Shibboleth (Windows only, I think)

https://www.logos.com/shibboleth

 

 

For building keyboard layouts for Mac, Ukelele (mentioned by Pchris) is free and pretty easy to use.

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=ukelele&highlight=ukelele

 

A.D.

For Egyptian hieroglyphs, JShesh is an awesome tool.

http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/

 

It does not produce Unicode output, however, so it does not address the problem Michel would like answered.

 

A.D.

 

 

Thank you so much for these links, A.D.!

[Michel Gilbert]

 

Heiroglyphics are in the extended Unicode pages, requiring UTF32+. These aren't supported just yet, though we may see what we can do to add support sooner rather than later.

 

So, long story short, just about everything should be improved in 11.0.2, except likely support of Hieroglyphics.

 

After a complete uninstall and reinstall, I was able to paste Unicode Hieroglyphs into the User Notes.

 

 

By complete, I mean I uninstalled the program and modules, deleted all Acc files and folders, including in the Registry, and reinstalled the whole program and its modules.

 

Unicode does seem to copy and paste better, with only a few characters missing here and there.

 

However, I still experience keyboard input issues, like the ones mentioned at

 

http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14747

 

especially when changing keyboards.

 

Regards,

 

Michel