Greetings!
Because the new version of Android, Kit Kat (Android 4.4), now have a better Hebrew font support for the WebView component used by MySword as it is now Chromium-based (Chromium is the same engine powering Google Chrome), we are please to announce the availability of new Hebrew fonts. Also, we had added 2 new Hebrew Bibles: Tanakh with Niqud and T'amim (Tanakh) and Tanakh with Niqud, T'amim and Strong's numbers (Tanakh+).
The following are the new Hebrew fonts:
- Keter Aram Tsova
- Keter YG
- Shlomo
- Shofar
- Taamey Ashkenaz
- Taamey David CLM
- Taamey Frank CLM
All of these support not only the vowels (nikkud) but also cantillation (t'amim) except for some bold variants. For sample screen shots, you can go to the Download Fonts page.
The Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) is also updated to correct some of the ? characters in some verses.
The Hebrew Bibles, Tanakh and Tanakh+ has been derived from the Open Scriptures project Morphology of the Hebrew Bible (morphhb) WLC data which is in turn based on the Unicode/XML Westminster Leningrad Codex (www.tanach.us) data which is in turn based on Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research by Kirk E. Lowery and Stephen K. Salisbury. The current version of this Westminster Leningrad Codex is 4.18.
These Bibles differ from the WLC MySword module in the following ways:
- The Tanakh modules use the KJV versification while the WLC uses the original Hebrew versification. It will be easy to compare the verses in Tanakh/Tanakh+ with other MySword modules.
- The Tanakh modules contained accents (Ta'amim) while the WLC lacks these (though both contained nikkud).
- Ezra SIL font better renders these Tanakh modules than the WLC because of the different way of encoding the letter "o" or holam-vav. For example in Gen 1:3, the word for light in the Tanakh module is א֑וֹר, while in WLC א֑וֹר. Notice the location of the dot above the vav. Holam-vav is most popularly internally encoded as vav-holam as in the Tanakh modules instead of holam-vav in WLC. However, there are still 97 verses in Tanakh that use holam-vav encoding so other fonts should be used if desired.
- These Tanakh modules will be regularly synchronized with the Open Scriptures project Morphology of the Hebrew Bible (morphhb) and Unicode/XML Westminster Leningrad Codex (www.tanach.us) data.
- Kethiv words do not have nikkud and Ta'amim in these Tanakh modules because the source (Unicode/XML Westminster Leningrad Codex (www.tanach.us)) does not have; only the Qere words have them. The WLC does have them though.
The Tanakh modules then are most recent compared to WLC module.
Also, the Tanakh+ uses interlinear formatting for the Strong's tags (the numbers are on a separate line) if Interlinear View is enabled in MySword.
You may download these Bibles and the Fonts by going to the Download page:
Alternatively, you can also download them directly via MySword running in your Android device. Just go to Menu->More->Download modules. Then select the module type, language (if any), then the modules, and start downloading.
Enjoy reading God's Word!