Siddur progress

[rhu]

It's amazing to me how I can use my siddur day in, day out, and miss so many minor typos. Specifically, there are subtle differences in the font that I'm using between the qamatz and the qamatz qatan and between the sh'va nach and the sh'va na vowels, and when I'm using the siddur I'm processing a word a time so I don't notice when I've missed a conversion.

So I've been slogging through the siddur, one word at a time. I can get through about 6 pages a night, so it's going to be the better part of June until I'm done with this. So far, not a single page has escaped without at least one correction. Plus I'm making some final aesthetic tweaks to the layout, normalizing the punctuation, and I still need to do a rigorous pass on the music: (1) to make sure there are no errors, (2) to normalize the pixel resolutions of the various images, and (3) to find a better way to integrate them preserving their CMYK colors, which my current toolchain completely wrecks.

One other thing that's changing as I go is that when this was just for me, I didn't put "stage directions" in for things that I know cold. But now that there's external interest, I need to do that in a few places, and occasionally that's causing pagination issues. And that also makes for more work.

As I'm working on this, I'm realizing once again how much this project draws on my particular combination of skills. There's the knowledge of the liturgy, the computer analysis of the text, the designing of my own fonts for part of it, the research and notation of the music, the development of a toolchain to allow for the combination of the text and music, the page layout experience and taste, the knowledge of how to order print and acquire an ISBN and collect and fulfil orders.... Perhaps this siddur is one of the ways I will be able to justify my life. I'm not saying no one else could have done this, but it's great to have a project that touches on so many of my interests and calls to so many filaments of my soul.

(No, there isn't a hidden puzzle, though.)

Comments

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

It is very impressive, as an aside.

[cellio]

This is a very cool project. Yes, the work will bog down at times, but it'll be worth it in the end.

I find myself wondering whether most of the stage directions could be encoded in a symbol instead of requiring extra space for text. It would be in keeping with the theme of using colors instead of words to indicate time-varying content. Probably not practical if you're trying to do everything, including kedusha and when to wave the lulav in hallel, but it was a thought. :-)

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

Most of the stage directions are symbolic. At the lulav-waving points in Hallel, for example, I have a small magen david in the margin.

But things like when to say Sim Shalom vs. Shalom Rav get wordy. "At Shacharit and Musaf, say Sim Shalom. At Minchah on a fast day, and at Shabbat Minchah according to the German and Israeli nusach, say Sim Shalom. At Minchah on other days, and at Maariv, say Shalom Rav."

Or when to say "tein bracha" vs "tein tal umatar livracha." You've got to accommodate Israel vs. galut; leap years; etc.

I was happy to leave these out when it was just for me, but now I have to figure out how to get them in without cluttering up the page.

[cellio]

Oh, right -- it's not just one set of instructions but a bunch of variables. Yeah, that makes it more complicated.

(It's totally impractical, but it's tempting to think about publishing it with a set of small stickers or something -- choose the ones for your tradition and drop 'em in...)

[abbasegal.livejournal.com]

How about something like a number with some icon, and free text in the back explaining? Not ideal, but it would keep the main pages uncluttered for the meivinim, but provide instructions for the newbies.