optionally show public decalogues only

[bdenckla]

Many Torah editions show public & private decalogues separately.

Sefaria only shows the combined decalogue, i.e. both public & private trope marks. I suspect most people find this confusing (if they look at the trope marks at all).

Even for those few who don't find it confusing, very few of them would be able to remember easily, if it all, which marks belong to which scheme. (Though the public and private schemes are known as the "upper" and "lower," that only roughly corresponds to which marks belong to which scheme.)

It would be nice if Sefaria could, optionally, show only the trope marks for the public scheme.

And perhaps it would be nice if, optionally, Sefaria could show only the trope marks for the private scheme.

Above I've presented things as if only the trope marks vary between public and private schemes but also:

• punctuation presence varies: sof pasuq (colon-like), maqaf, & legarmeih (same Unicode as paseq).
• vowels vary (patach vs. qamats)
• dagesh presence varies

Appendix: Here's some background most are probably are well aware of, but in case others who read this are not:

The decalogue (10 commandments) appears twice in the Torah: once in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. There are two trope (cantillation) schemes for each of these two decalogues.

The schemes go by various names:

• "the one for public reading," ha-elyon, "the upper"
• "the one for private study," ha-tachton, "the lower"

[bdenckla]

For example here is my first stab at a separate upper & lower versions of Exodus 20, based on Sefaria's combined source: Exodus20L.txt Exodus20U.txt Here's Sefaria's combined source, in the same format: Exodus20.txt (At least that's what I got from the most recent JSON export, which may not be up to date.)

[bdenckla]

For reference, here are those same texts expanded to show Unicode names: Exodus20L.txt Exodus20U.txt Exodus20.txt (In this format they can easily be compared using standard text-diffing programs.)

Such diffing will reveal that my conversion is:

• dropping rafe marks
• losing meteg position information

So those are a bugs. (Though I think rafe marks and nonstandard meteg positions, along with hundreds (thousands?) of other LC-specific things, should be discarded, but that's a separate issue!)

A very careful reading of the diffs will also reveal that in addition to just splitting information into upper and lower, I felt I had to perform two edits. I.e. there two places where information was actually added or removed (as opposed to just classified as upper or lower):

• In verse 3 word 2, יִהְיֶֽה, I felt a meteg needed a merkha added to it, i.e. I felt there should be an upper/lower split where Sefaria has no split.
• In verse 4 word 13, וַאֲשֶׁ֥֣ר, I felt that a munach/merkha split should just become a merkha, i.e. I felt there should be no upper/lower split where Sefaria has a split.

Perhaps these edits should be treated as an issue separate from this issue, keeping this issue strictly about the presentation of existing data as opposed to changing existing data. I can provide references justifying these edits.

In addition to these two edits to accents (trope marks), in the upper and lower versions there are maqaf and paseq punctuation characters added where there were none, which could certainly be considered edits. And vice versa: there were maqaf and paseq characters removed.

Sof pasuq characters probably also need to appear & disappear compared to the combined version, but I left them alone for now.

[edamboritz]

Hi! Yes the subject of the two systems of cantillation (and vowels and verse segmentation that go with it) for the Decalogue chapters is fascinating both linguistically and historically!

We like your suggestion to display them separately for the users who may benefit from that. The choice to keep both systems and the verse segmentation of the private system on our main edition was deliberate though (There are many variations of how to display the main body of these chapters in various editions). Currently our design doesn't lend itself naturally to a place to put these separated alternates that you suggested so we'll have to workshop that a bit to see where it makes sense.

Regarding your suggestions for corrections - Yes, In the future I would recommend sending separate emails to [email protected] with a detailed description of your reasoning and references for the suggested edits. I had a look at your two main suggestions though and they do appear to be in accordance with extant editions of the Aleppo Codex.

Thanks!

[bdenckla]

I submitted, to [email protected], the two Exodus Decalogue suggestions described earlier in this thread, as well as two more in that Decalogue, for a total of four suggestions.

All four suggestions were rejected.

So, I think that leaves two main ways to proceed in producing separate upper & lower decalogues for Sefaria:

1. Create upper & lower without these suggestions, i.e. create upper & lower strictly based on the current, combined Sefaria text. This will result in upper & lower decalogues that differ, in 4 places, from all seven upper/lower Exodus decalogue pairs I have consulted. All seven agree with each other on these 4 issues.
2. Create upper & lower decalogues that incorporate these suggestions. I.e. if these decalogues were combined, they would not result in the current, combined Sefaria text.

In other words, the upper & lower can agree with the combined, or they can agree with current consensus, but they can't agree with both.

Neither of those two options above is great, but perhaps number 2 is the lesser of evils, especially if we can somehow attach some documentation (e.g. notes or "footnotes") noting the areas of divergence.

I would be glad to provide upper & lower decalogues conforming to either of these options, or both.