IVth International Forum on Syriac Computing
Thomas
Joseph
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2003
Vol. 6, No. 2
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv6n2crjoseph
Thomas JOSEPH
IVth International Forum on Syriac Computing
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol6/HV6N2CRJoseph.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2003
vol 6
issue 2
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Computing
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[1] The
Fourth International Forum on Syriac Computing was held in
conjunction with the Fourth North American Syriac Symposium at
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey on July
11, 2003. The Forum as well as the Symposium were co-sponsored
by Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton University, The
Institute for Advanced Study, and Beth Mardutho: The Syriac
Institute.
[2] Five
papers and a tutorial were presented at the forum in three
sessions. Several participants attended the sessions. The
sessions were streamed live over the internet enabling
participants from the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia and even
Saudi Arabia to listen live remotely to the presentations and
discussions that followed. The streamed media will be archived
on the Beth Mardutho
website.
[3] In the
first session chaired by Prof. William Clocksin two papers were
presented. The first was by Thomas Joseph, Web Master of the
Syriac Orthodox
Resources web site, on the automated generation of the
liturgical calendar and lectionary of the Syriac Orthodox
Church. The paper, co-authored with Simon Skaria of Microsoft,
provided an overview of the evolution of the liturgical
calendar in the Syriac Orthodox Church, the algorithms for
generating the calendar, and the description of an
implementation of the algorithms in a Java
application.
[4] This was
followed by a presentation by Emil Soleyman-Zomalan, Web Master
of Beth Mardutho, on
the architecture and implementation of the re-designed Beth
Mardutho web site. Participants offered both speakers many
worthy ideas for enhancing the respective implementations.
[5] In the
second session chaired by Thomas Joseph three papers were
presented. George Kiraz, Director of Beth Mardutho, and Steve
Caruso, the lead programmer of the eBeth Arke project,
presented an overview and demonstration of the eBeth Arke: The
Syriac Digital Library Project. This is an ambitious project
which will create a digital archive of mss., out-of-copyright
books, journal articles, and collections of other multimedia
material of relevance to Syriac Studies. Such a project will be
an immense resource for scholars in Syriac Studies and
facilitate research in the field. A beta site with 50 books was
used to demonstrate how scholars will be able to access such a
library on-line for their research.
[6] Next,
William Clocksin presented a paper on the automatic recognition
of Syriac handwriting, co-authored with Prem P.J. Fernando. The
paper described several computer-based techniques developed for
the automatic transcription of Estrangelo handwriting from
historical manuscripts. Data on the recognition rates achieved
in experiments using a variety of segmentation methods were
presented. This is a very promising line of research that will
advance automatic handwriting recognition in general; but more
importantly for Syriac Studies scholars and Syriac communities,
this will hopefully bear fruit in the form of a handwriting
recognition product which will facilitate the digitization of
Syriac mss. into electronic text. The paper is published in this
issue of Hugoye.
[7] The
final paper in the session, on Meltho: Syriac Open Type fonts,
was presented by Sargon Hasso. Sargon described the design and
architecture of the Meltho fonts that support three major
Syriac scripts: Estrangelo, Serto, and East Syriac. Meltho
fonts are based on the OpenType fonts supported by Microsoft
Windows operating systems and the Syriac character encoding
specified in Unicode 3.0. Sargon discussed the challenges in
designing fonts for traditional Syriac scripts such as the
contextual variation of letter shapes, diacritics and their
placement on characters, ligatures and other unique behaviors.
He then highlighted the features of the OpenType font
technology which enable the glyph shaping logic to be embedded
within the font files offering the designer flexibility and
control over glyph shape rendering by the target operating
systems. Current support for Meltho fonts in popular desktop
applications as well future support with emerging technology
standards such as XSL FO were briefly addressed.
[8] In the
third and final session, George Kiraz presented a tutorial on
using Syriac in Windows XP. The tutorial provided instructions
on the installation of Meltho fonts, and demonstrations on
using these fonts in Windows applications. Participants who had
difficulties with the installation of the fonts on their
computers were able to get these resolved during the
tutorial.
[9] The
fourth International Forum on Syriac Computing was a resounding
success. As with the past forums, it provided an opportunity
for an esoteric group of scholars, technology architects and
developers to interact and exchange ideas on harnessing
technologies for supporting scholarly research in Syriac
Studies and enriching the religious and cultural heritage of
Syriac speaking communities.
[10] This
was the first forum to be streamed live on the internet, thanks
to the exceptional efforts of the media personnel at Princeton
Theological Seminary. The archives of the streamed media will
be made available on the Beth Mardutho web site. The
wider dissemination of information on the innovative projects
presented at the forum will hopefully attract more talent into
this narrow but important field of activity, so essential to
bringing Syriac Studies into the third millenium.