The Library

9:19 AM

@JonEricson - if BH.SE ever gets out of Beta ;) how about considering this new font, Alef, for the font stack. MUCH better clarity for Hebrew!

Susan

11:51 AM

@Davïd is there a solution to my bolding difficulties here in whatever font we're using now?

Davïd

12:15 PM

@Susan It's pretty much as Joseph described it, I think. I just did the edit now and it seemed to work fine.

@Susan It's Arial, but the issue shouldn't be related to the display font. I found that sometimes the Unicode encoding of the Hebrew Bible from the German Bible Society's website is ... odd. I wonder if they're inputting it in an unexpected order (with the te'amim)?

Susan

@Davïd my trouble was that I did it and it looked fine, but then I came back in a few minutes and it wasn't.

Davïd

@Susan Does it still look okay now?

Susan

@Davïd no....

@Davïd it's ok, but just all spaced out

Davïd

@Susan Just a sec....

Caleb

I think it's okay from my view.

Susan

12:18 PM

@Caleb hm, maybe it's just me...

Caleb

(Although you could reverse the Hebrew and I might not notice, so I'm a bad one to ask.)

Davïd

@Susan Is that what you're seeing, Susan?

Susan

@Davïd no!

@Davïd I'm very confused

Davïd

@Caleb Same for you Caleb?

Caleb

Susan

12:19 PM

@Davïd actually, your answer that I linked to there also looked all spaced out for the bolded hebrew

Davïd

@Susan Looks like Caleb and I aren't seeing the problem you've got.

Caleb

Looks like I have the same thing you do @Davïd.

Davïd

@Caleb Yep - so is the problem the browser/operating system, @Susan

Susan

@Davïd ok then, never mind, thanks for your help!

Davïd

@Susan Out of curiosity - what are you using at the moment?

Susan

12:21 PM

@Davïd apple safari. Ah, just opened it in firefox and it's perfect!

Caleb

@Davïd I'm on Linux and that shot is Firefox, but I just checked Chromium and it looks the same.

Davïd

@Susan Interesting! I don't think Apple is especially interested in Unicode, somehow. (Like Caleb, I'm on Ubuntu at the moment, in Firefox - just firing up Win7 in a virtua box, though)

Susan

@Davïd Right, not surprising I suppose. It's the same on my ipad - messed up in the native browser but ok in chrome. If only they would let me switch the default...

@Davïd thanks for your help!

Davïd

^^^ In the "FWIW" category = Chrome in Win7 (and another UV for the OP ;)

Caleb

> Like Caleb, I'm on Ubuntu […]

Ubuntu?! Me?! Slander me not with such uncouth puerility!

5

Davïd

12:25 PM

@Susan No problem - good to connect. Really appreciate the ♦ job you're doing - you, Caleb and Dan make a good team. :)

@Caleb :-o Crise cardiaque! Many apologies!

@Caleb What is your OS? I feel like I should know by now.....

Caleb

@Davïd I'm not sure why you would. I don't make it as known as my preference in editors ;) In fact even many hard core Linux geeks haven't heard of my favorite disro (PLD Linux) but it has kind of jumped the shark. I use Arch-Linux on most new installs these days with some specialty distros thrown in for good measure. I've run just about every *nix distro under the sun at least once (which is a lot) and administered a pretty good subset of them.

Davïd

@Caleb Ha - maybe it was just the editor pref's that made me generalize to OS (except that you do specify "Linux") - maybe I thought I had picked it up in Software Recs?

@Caleb Do you have a preferred "desktop" for Arch? or ... would that be similarly puerile? ;)

Caleb

12:44 PM

@Davïd I use awesome as a window manager with no desktop environment for myself but it's not for everybody and certainly not a place to start. I don't much care what other people use actually. If I'm setting up a desktop for somebody without extant preferences I'll start them with vanilla Gnome-3 Shell for a while but eventually run them through a few options and let them pick what they like.

Frank Luke

1:35 PM

I've created a gallery room for Paul Glenn Cawley and I, but he doesn't have enough rep to go to chat and has never been in here. If he drops in, I can add him to the list of room owners, right? (or at least write-users)

AJ Henderson

2:08 PM

@FrankLuke yes, giving a user explicit write overrides the minimum reputation. Normally you can't add a user till they first join chat, but super-ping creates a chat user, so I took care of that as well so he should now have access to that room

Frank Luke

@AJHenderson Thank you very much!

And for leaving him a ping to follow.

AJ Henderson

yeah, no worries, I end up doing that quite a bit myself to help out new users when comments doesn't quite cut it

so I'm well rehearsed at it :)

Paul Vargas

3:25 PM

@Caleb @Davïd I was surprised too. Ha, ha. — Both are using Ubuntu! Even the same browser! ;)

Mark Edward

3:41 PM

@all I flagged a question last night as "Better for Hermeneutics.SE?" It was late and I was tired, and I was on the mobile app, so I mistakenly thought I was on Christianity.SE. My apologies.

Caleb

@FrankLuke I've taken the liberty of putting words in your mouth and fixed the link in your comment to be directly to that room so he doesn't get confused by multiple instruction sets.

Susan

@MarkEdward I figured as much and dismissed it, no problem. "Helpful" as always. :-)

Davïd

3:59 PM

@PaulVargas No no no! Caleb is NOT using Ubuntu! I confess my responsibility for that calumny, and humbly repent in dust and ashes. :'(

Frank Luke

4:19 PM

@Caleb Thank you, that's good. Since he has edited his answer to address me, David, and Dan, I'm starting to think that he won't go into the chat room.

Caleb

5:30 PM

@FrankLuke It's hard to break some people of the "forum" habits. The strict QnA format is just foreign to some folks and they don't adapt well to the venue not fitting their patterns.

Frank Luke

@Caleb I understand. SE has a different way of looking at discussions, but it sure is nicer when you get in that way of looking at things.

I've been toying with writing up my own answer on that question (in the negative), but the gap theory has so many flaws, you almost have to start with how to shape Hebrew letters.

For example, they keep talking about revia and how that means the waw should be a but. No. That isn't what it means. There are other, stronger, disjunctive accents used in Hebrew that don't make the waw mean "but".

Zoe

Don't people realise there is a large gap in the Gap Theory? Touche.

2

Susan

5:45 PM

@FrankLuke not to mention that the revia isn't really before the waw, as you pointed out

@FrankLuke I for one would love to see your answer

@FrankLuke and I think you'd do a great job of teaching us how to shape Hebrew letters. :-)

Zoe

@Susan Yea, I'd put a ring on it.

Frank Luke

@Susan Right. It's on the aleph. That's like being over the E in the clause "and the earth."

Jon Ericson

@Davïd Do you think the Judaism site might want that? We could look into using that as a network-wide Hebrew font if so.

Jon Ericson

7:13 PM

Standard Flavored Markdown

Ok. No onebox on that at all.

Doesn't define any meaningful extensions, however.

Davïd

@JonEricson Tell me there's table and footnote support ... please?

@JonEricson Frantically reading now -- hoping against hope . . . .

@JonEricson About the Hebrew font - I find it remarkably legible down to quite small point sizes. Some of my earlier thoughts are in meta and if there was movement on this front there might be some "knock on's", of course.

@JonEricson It might be worth running past the mods on MY. I'm in touch with one of them from time to time, and I would be happy to ping an email along if that would help. I expect you're in closer touch than I am, though! ;)

Davïd

7:39 PM

@JonEricson The inevitable MarkdownExra topic

Jon Ericson

@Davïd So I asked our devs about this. Markdowndeep has some licensing problems for us. Also, now that the standard exists, we will want to support that first.

There's a lot of interest in it, but since it's brand new, we aren't ready to change much of anything yet.

Davïd

@JonEricson (Weeps, quietly, into his tea . . .)

Jon Ericson

When there's a standard for Markdown Extra, I bet we will work towards that.

Davïd

@JonEricson I expect it's inevitable. Seriously, I'm thrilled (OK, at least delighted) to see this development. I commented in Jeff Atwood's blog posts years ago, and this just makes so much sense.

@JonEricson One step at a time also makes sense - one must be patient! ;)

@JonEricson I have to think @JackDouglas will be interested in this one, given his bold "Let's fork Markdown" meta-post.

Jon Ericson

7:59 PM

@Davïd I had both you and him pinged, but that got lost in my effort to one-box the blog post. ;-)

Davïd

@JonEricson Ah! So I think that tells me what "onebox" is - baffled, me. :)

Paul Vargas

9:14 PM

@Davïd @Caleb I like the combination of xmonad + xmobar. See this.

Davïd

@JonEricson - and now for something completely different. Serious question: is it ever possible to contemplate deleting a Q&A?

@PaulVargas Whoa. ;) I'm an Ubuntu/Mint kinda guy. That's out there, Paul!

Frank Luke

-4

A: Is there a possibility of a gap of time between Gen 1:1 and 1:2?

Do the following reasons prove that the correct exegesis of Genesis Chapter 1 is that God is RESTORING the earth and local solar system in 6 literal 24-hour periods of time, NOT creating it for the first time? I think the answer is CLEARLY "yes" and here is why... The use of the Hebrew word BAR...

Edited this in at the bottom: "You see, this was my real reason for coming to this site. To flesh out who is actually in control of the content here and just as I suspected, it is a bunch of YEC's with probably a few Day-Age proponents thrown in the mix."

Davïd

@FrankLuke See my ping to Jon a few lines up, Frank....

Frank Luke

This post now looks really bad for the site and he has admitted he has ulterior motives in posting. He isn't interested in learning and sharing with others.

@Davïd The one about deleting?

Davïd

@FrankLuke Yep - just added link to make explicit.

Frank Luke

9:20 PM

We can vote to delete an answer once it reaches a certain threshold of negative votes. There might be a rule about it can't have any positive votes, but I'm not sure.

I have just cast the first delete vote. It's a link underneath the answer next to the edit button.

Davïd

@FrankLuke This is the comment that most worried me - now the same sentiment has been edited into the "answer".

@FrankLuke So there's no "vote to delete" for the question, then?

Frank Luke

We can VTC it again.

Davïd

@FrankLuke I had VTC'ed, and removed after Scott's noble edit.

Frank Luke

Once it reaches 5 (I think) it won't show up except to high rep users, and maybe not even then.

Davïd

@FrankLuke I just VTC'ed, and it's +4/-4, amazingly.

Frank Luke

9:24 PM

Scott did a great job on that edit. Looks barely like the original, but the original wasn't doable.

Paul Vargas

@Davïd VtD? I don't have that power yet. :/

Davïd

@PaulVargas Neither do I. I don't know if it exists for mortal users.

Frank Luke

@Davïd After Scott's edit, I voted the question up. I think the dvs are from the original and were never reversed.

Davïd

@FrankLuke I never UV'ed after Scott's edit, just undid my DV.

@FrankLuke But I suspect you're right on the overall pattern.

Frank Luke

I'm not seeing any votes to close on the question and the score is still 4/-4 even after refresh.

?

Davïd

9:29 PM

@FrankLuke @PaulVargas - I just this second registered a VtC - my DV made it +4/-4, in fact. It was +4/-3 before!

Frank Luke

@Davïd That's right. It had been +1 total before.

Got to run. Hard to tell which reason to use, though. Opinion based, too broad. Not an option for "Person is not really asking a question but seeking true believers."

Davïd

@FrankLuke I used "opinion", but hard to fit best as you note. Good to touch base, and thanks for engaging Glenn so patiently - very good of you!

Jon Ericson

@Davïd Sure. See if you can vote to delete now that I've closed the question.

(Voting to delete questions is a moderator tool.)

Davïd

@JonEricson Thanks - I'm only seeing share | edit | reopen | flag | protect.

@JonEricson It looks as if I should be able to see a VtD, then, but ... am I looking in the wrong place?

Paul Vargas

@Davïd For me: share | edit | reopen | flag.

Davïd

9:42 PM

@JonEricson "You must wait for a question to be closed for 2 days before you can vote for deletion."

47 hrs, 58 minutes and counting ....

Jon Ericson

10:04 PM

@Davïd Ah. Flag a mod, then. ;-)

Susan

@JonEricson not sure I get it...why are we getting rid of the question and not just the answer?

Paul Vargas

10:19 PM

@Davïd @Susan The user went out to fish but caught no fish.

Susan

@FrankLuke oh, I see what you're saying, hadn't read that far back, sorry

@PaulVargas indeed!

Jon Ericson

15

Q: Should we avoid stump-the-chumps questions?

I've noticed a pattern from Christianity.SE creeping onto our site occasionally that Caleb calls a "stump the chump" question. The phrase comes from a segment on the Car Talk show in which they bring back someone whose car problem was solved to see if the hosts (or chumps) got the answer correct...

discussion

Susan

10:46 PM

@JonEricson OK, fair enough. I guess I was just questioning it because Scott had gone through the trouble to edit the question and the community had decided to re-open, and nothing changed about the question after that. However, I guess the OP revealed his motives pretty clearly.

Jon Ericson

11:06 PM

@Susan I don't know if the question is worth keeping or not, to be honest. (I probably ought to have deleted the answer myself. ;-)

Susan

11:22 PM

@JonEricson Me either. Seems like a good answer would be possible, but I think our best candidates have opted out....

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