Greek font issues in K&D

[Alistair]

Hi, I've noticed an issue with Greek in the Keil & Delitzsch commentary.

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BA 5.5.1.30 on MacOS 15.3.1

[epement]

Hello Alistair,

I am using Windows 10 with Verdana as my default font. It shows properly on my system (well, except for the color of the first character).

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I changed the font to Segoe UI, increased the font size for better readability, and it still looks normal on my side:

BA Segoe UI.jpg (5.75 KiB) Viewed 22384 times

Maybe you have a different operating system, or maybe your fonts do not display Unicode the same way. Possibly your K&D commentary module is older or different than the one I am using. Do you have an older commentary module or a different operating system?

In case you're interested, this is what the original shows. The first character before the capital O (omicron) is a rough breathing mark, and over the second o (omicron) is an acute accent.

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[RobertRathbone]

I'm running BA on Linux (Kubuntu 24.10) and I'm seeing the same thing as Alistair. For a direct, apples-to-apples comparison, I switched the font to Verdana and saw the problem:

BA Verdana font.png (6.11 KiB) Viewed 21422 times

I don't have the Segoe UI font on my system, so I picked another Windows font (Times New Roman) to test and the problem is still there:

BA Times New Roman font.png (6.89 KiB) Viewed 21422 times

I suspect that the issue stems from the way that Unix style operating systems render fonts, and not the fonts themselves. I also bought and downloaded the K&D commentary after seeing this post (I became interested in it since it's an OT commentary and I'm currently teaching in the OT at church) so I should have the latest version of it.

I also noticed that in the raw content of that verse in the commentary's .cmt file, there is a break in the HTML source of the text in question:

Code: Select all

woman, <i>Markaya</i>, or  ̔<gu>Ομο</gu>́<gu>ρωκα</gu> (? Ocean). Bel 

I wonder if the fact that the splitting of the Greek word into two segments bracketed by the Greek tags ("<gu></gu>") is somehow introducing the extra characters to be displayed on non-Windows operating systems?

Hope the additional information helps...
Robert

[Tim]

The " b' " is a byte marker showing that the text was not converted properly into a unicode string. I'll look into it.

[Alistair]

I have found the same issue in other modules, e.g Vincent commentary.

Is it a Mac thing? I can set the Hebrew Font but haven't found a way to change the Greek font.

Thanks

[epement]

I have found the same issue in other modules, e.g Vincent commentary.

Is it a Mac thing? I can set the Hebrew Font but haven't found a way to change the Greek font.

The classic study materials like Vincent's and K&D are entered by volunteers. They may have been entered years ago, by people who knew the Greek alphabet, but maybe were not familiar with Unicode and the use of combining characters in Greek.

The BA module contains XML-style tags to indicate the beginning and end of Greek Unicode <gu>...text here ...</gu>, but with modern UTF-8, I'm wonder whether this markup style is even needed, because in real UTF-8, Greek characters have their own code points and don't need to be flagged for font changes, as it used to be in the old days.

Tim will probably need to set me straight on this (smile).

[Tim]

The following issues have been fixed (I think),

• The byte marker issue (b') in the Mac edition.
• The pesky Javascript warning on first start.
• The Dct and Cmt dropdown lists are now selectable
• Updated 5.6 splashscreen.

Fixes for the Linux edition will be soon.

Just redownload the Mac edition from the Downloads page and replace the old App.

This is v5.6.1.05

[Alistair]

Almost here… got some weirdness still, also seen in other modules.

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This is fromThe Pulpit Commentary:

Screenshot 2025-03-22 at 2.18.11 am.png (55.56 KiB) Viewed 21348 times