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Sunday, 12 September 2021

The SimHebrew Bible - Planning the production date

The Hebrew Bible in Simulated
Hebrew – with English Guide

The SimHebrew Bible is pending production. [Update - we have selected a date - Nov 11. Links here. I am actively looking for reviewers. Please contact me via a comment or via twitter DM @drmacdonald.] Just a few little things to fully set up this book subtitled, "The Hebrew Bible in Simulated Hebrew – with English Guide".

I love having this book on my phone. It's worth all the past 15 years of effort and it uses that effort effectively and thoroughly. I can find anything in the words and their forms and uses with a few swipes and clicks and all the uses of a word or a phrase in English or Hebrew using the built-in search.

I have been testing the full navigation within the book as divided into 24 books and now 929 files. Starting a chapter after the 'gap', (if scrolling, or at the top of a page, if not) - is important for ease of eyeballing where you are. The book is repeated for each chapter because some readers do not tell you exactly where you are when you reopen the book.

The background-color(s) I have simplified, but I have left in a discrete left-border for the first page of each of the 24 books as noted in the previous post on CSS classes.

I thought about programming a back button – but there is no need since the reader software provides an adequate one. (But I may do it anyway for people who browse and don't want to hunt and peck in the table of contents.)

I have added the glossary page from the concordance. That allows the reader to have a search and click, by English lemma or Hebrew root, to a list of every usage of a word or its root and a pronunciation guide for it – too valuable to leave out. Given that the Hebrew is also in Latin letters, it is very easy to search for a given Hebrew word form throughout the book itself.

It's a single volume with the whole of the 'Old Testament' in SimHebrew with an English Guide. A real value for study. 

Here is an example of a page of Jonah with hgdolh highlighted. With the phrase hyir hgdolh {the great city} showing clearly used 3 times in that story, you might note that only in one other place is this phrase used. Imagine how easy it would be to learn Hebrew with this book at your fingertips.

Notice the different usage of prepositions in the instructions to Jonah between chapters 1 and 3. Look closely at the search block. The first time the preposition is 'yl'. The second time it is 'al'. Now ask, Are they really equivalent, the second with a lighter glottal stop, the other deeper in the throat - perhaps more urgent the first time, and then a realization that Jonah needs to be cajoled more gently into doing what he is told? Fishy tale... but a great read - (and I have a full score of a 20 minute cantata if anyone wants to perform it - choir and soloists and harp - could be arranged for small orchestra).

Using a built in search capacity - as easy to search the Hebrew as it is an English phrase


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