Re: lyrics for right-left writing systems such as hebrew or arabic

[Ted Walther]

I'm having the same problem.  I am mixing up Latin and Hebrew lettering
in the lyrics, and I want them ALL to render strictly Left-to-Right.  Is
there any way to do this in Lilypond?  You can see the problem it causes
in this example:

  http://hymns.reactor-core.org/HaikVantoura/Shema4.pdf

This causes problems because I am trying to put the Hebrew lettering
underneath a strict letter-for-letter English transliteration of the
text.  The English transliteration is Left-to-Right, but the Hebrew gets
munged as Right-to-Left on a syllable by syllable basis!

Ted

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 03:34:41PM -0000, address@hidden wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009, Richard Schoeller <address@hidden> said:
>
> > One common approach when combining a right-to-left language with
> > left-to-right musical notation is to render each syllable of the lyrics
> > right-to-left but have the overall flow of the music left-to-right.  I
> > haven't tried this with any of the stuff that I've done (I present the
> > lyrics in transliteration).  So, I can't tell you how well this works in
> > LilyPond.
>
> However it is done, and by whatecer program, there are some pretty hefty
> issues for position-contextual writing systems such as arabic.  Arabic
> letters have variant shapes when used in different positions (opening,
> middle, closing); fragmenting a wordd into sylables exposes middle
> letters; not at all sure the common reader is used to seeing that.
> Further, when placed correctly under the music they will be presented in
> backwards order:
>
>  hava nagilla
>
> is shown as
>
>  ah - av_   an - lig - al_
>
> which is less of a challenge for a markup-based entry system like lilypond
> than it is for a GUI-based system that attempts WYSIWYG editing of the
> lyrics in place (of interest here should we someday go for that).  The
> challenge being to re-order the syllables (unnaturally) as the user splits
> the words for us.
> --
> Dana Emery
>
>
>
>
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Name:    Ted Walther
Phone:   208-310-7032
Skype:   tederific
Email:   address@hidden
Address: #225 17700 58 Ave, Surrey, BC V3S1L6