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47-549: There are two texts that complement each other in the Alma Rišaia series: English translations of the two texts were published by E. S. Drower in 1963. Drower based the translations on manuscripts 41 and 48 of the Drower Collection (abbreviated DC 41 and DC 48 ). This Mandaeism-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Drower Collection This article contains

94-773: A list of Mandaic manuscripts , which are almost entirely Mandaean religious texts written in Classical Mandaic . Well-known Mandaean texts include the Ginza Rabba (also known as the Sidra Rabbā ), the Mandaean Book of John , and the Qulasta . Texts for Mandaean priests include The 1012 Questions , among others. Some, like the Ginza Rabba , are codices (bound books), while others, such as

141-403: A Compugraphics system for typesetting and page layout. The magazine did not yet accept articles on floppy disks, but hoped to do so "as matters progress". Before the 1980s, practically all typesetting for publishers and advertisers was performed by specialist typesetting companies. These companies performed keyboarding, editing and production of paper or film output, and formed a large component of

188-484: A Mandaean living in Australia, has digitized many Mandaean texts using typesetted Mandaic script . This section lists the titles of various Mandaic religious texts. The primary three scriptures containing the most important narratives, liturgies, and doctrines of Mandaeism are the Ginza Rabba , Mandaean Book of John , and Qulasta . They widely used by both lay Mandaeans and Mandaean priests . The Haran Gawaita

235-402: A case, contained cast metal sorts , each with a single letter or symbol, but backwards (so they would print correctly). The compositor assembled these sorts into words, then lines, then pages of text, which were then bound tightly together by a frame, making up a form or page. If done correctly, all letters were of the same height, and a flat surface of type was created. The form was placed in

282-401: A family of typesetting languages with names that were derivatives of the word "SCRIPT". Later versions of SCRIPT included advanced features, such as automatic generation of a table of contents and index, multicolumn page layout, footnotes, boxes, automatic hyphenation and spelling verification. NSCRIPT was a port of SCRIPT to OS and TSO from CP-67/CMS SCRIPT. Waterloo Script was created at

329-479: A keyboard or other devices could produce the desired text. Most of the successful systems involved the in-house casting of the type to be used, hence are termed "hot metal" typesetting. The Linotype machine , invented in 1884, used a keyboard to assemble the casting matrices, and cast an entire line of type at a time (hence its name). In the Monotype System , a keyboard was used to punch a paper tape , which

376-489: A language's orthography for visual display. Typesetting requires one or more fonts (which are widely but erroneously confused with and substituted for typefaces ). One significant effect of typesetting was that authorship of works could be spotted more easily, making it difficult for copiers who have not gained permission. During much of the letterpress era , movable type was composed by hand for each page by workers called compositors . A tray with many dividers, called

423-408: A light source to selectively expose characters onto light-sensitive paper. Originally they were driven by pre-punched paper tapes . Later they were connected to computer front ends. One of the earliest electronic photocomposition systems was introduced by Fairchild Semiconductor . The typesetter typed a line of text on a Fairchild keyboard that had no display. To verify correct content of the line it

470-512: A press and inked, and then printed (an impression made) on paper. Metal type read backwards, from right to left, and a key skill of the compositor was their ability to read this backwards text. Before computers were invented, and thus becoming computerized (or digital) typesetting, font sizes were changed by replacing the characters with a different size of type. In letterpress printing, individual letters and punctuation marks were cast on small metal blocks, known as "sorts," and then arranged to form

517-479: A solvent the expensive sorts had to be redistributed into the typecase - called sorting or dissing - so they would be ready for reuse. Errors in sorting could later produce misprints if, say, a p was put into the b compartment. The diagram at right illustrates a cast metal sort: a face, b body or shank, c point size, 1 shoulder, 2 nick, 3 groove, 4 foot. Wooden printing sorts were used for centuries in combination with metal type. Not shown, and more

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564-613: Is a private collection of Mandaean manuscripts belonging to the Mandaean priest Rbai Rafid al-Sabti in Nijmegen , Netherlands. Important manuscripts in the collection include different versions of the Ginza Rabba , various priestly texts, and numerous magical texts. Individual Mandaean priests , including Salah Choheili and Sahi Bashikh , among others, also have private manuscript collections. The Rbai Rafid Collection (RRC), held by Rbai Rafid al-Sabti in Nijmegen , Netherlands,

611-582: Is a text that discusses the origins and history of the Mandaean people . Magical texts such as zrazta , qmaha , and the like are listed below. Note that these manuscript designations ( zrazta , qmaha , etc.) are interchangeable, with different manuscript titles providing varying designations. The majority of known Mandaean texts are currently held at libraries in Oxford , London , and Paris . The Code Sabéen (also Codex Sabéen or CS) manuscripts are held at

658-624: Is considered fairly difficult to learn on its own, and deals more with appearance than structure. The LaTeX macro package, written by Leslie Lamport at the beginning of the 1980s, offered a simpler interface and an easier way to systematically encode the structure of a document. LaTeX markup is widely used in academic circles for published papers and books. Although standard TeX does not provide an interface of any sort, there are programs that do. These programs include Scientific Workplace and LyX , which are graphical/interactive editors; TeXmacs , while being an independent typesetting system, can also aid

705-426: Is likely the world's largest private collection of Mandaean manuscripts. The physical manuscripts date back to the 17th century, while the contents date back to pre-Islamic times. The entire collection was photographed by Matthew Morgenstern in 2013. Many manuscripts in the collection have been digitized and published online in transliterated format by Matthew Morgenstern and Ohad Abudraham. RRC manuscripts cited in

752-574: Is still included with a number of Unix and Unix-like systems, and has been used to typeset a number of high-profile technical and computer books. Some versions, as well as a GNU work-alike called groff , are now open source . The TeX system, developed by Donald E. Knuth at the end of the 1970s, is another widespread and powerful automated typesetting system that has set high standards, especially for typesetting mathematics. LuaTeX and LuaLaTeX are variants of TeX and of LaTeX scriptable in Lua . TeX

799-890: The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL) are as follows. The following list is compiled from the CAL and Morgenstern's article "New Manuscript Sources for the Study of Mandaic". The collection also contains multimedia items, including audio and video recordings. A few of them include: The Drower Collection (DC), held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford University , is the world's most extensive institutional library collection of Mandaean manuscripts. The collection consists of 55 Mandaean manuscripts collected by E. S. Drower . Drower has published some of

846-657: The Apple Macintosh , Aldus PageMaker (and later QuarkXPress ) and PostScript and on the PC platform with Xerox Ventura Publisher under DOS as well as Pagemaker under Windows. Improvements in software and hardware, and rapidly lowering costs, popularized desktop publishing and enabled very fine control of typeset results much less expensively than the minicomputer dedicated systems. At the same time, word processing systems, such as Wang , WordPerfect and Microsoft Word , revolutionized office documents. They did not, however, have

893-591: The 1970s and early 1980s, such as Datalogics Pager, Penta, Atex , Miles 33, Xyvision, troff from Bell Labs , and IBM's Script product with CRT terminals, were better able to drive these electromechanical devices, and used text markup languages to describe type and other page formatting information. The descendants of these text markup languages include SGML , XML and HTML . The minicomputer systems output columns of text on film for paste-up and eventually produced entire pages and signatures of 4, 8, 16 or more pages using imposition software on devices such as

940-542: The 1980s by fully digital systems employing a raster image processor to render an entire page to a single high-resolution digital image , now known as imagesetting. The first commercially successful laser imagesetter, able to make use of a raster image processor, was the Monotype Lasercomp. ECRM, Compugraphic (later purchased by Agfa ) and others rapidly followed suit with machines of their own. Early minicomputer -based typesetting software introduced in

987-601: The Israeli-made Scitex Dolev. The data stream used by these systems to drive page layout on printers and imagesetters, often proprietary or specific to a manufacturer or device, drove development of generalized printer control languages, such as Adobe Systems ' PostScript and Hewlett-Packard 's PCL . Computerized typesetting was so rare that BYTE magazine (comparing itself to "the proverbial shoemaker's children who went barefoot") did not use any computers in production until its August 1979 issue used

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1034-566: The National Library of France (BnF). Much of the following information is derived from an 1874 catalogue of Syriac manuscripts compiled by Jules-Antoine Taschereau  [ fr ] , which lists descriptions for Mss. Sabéen 1–19. Many of the manuscripts can be viewed online at the Bibliothèque nationale de France's Gallica digital library. Buckley has also found Ginza manuscripts that are privately held by Mandaeans in

1081-809: The United States (two in San Diego , California; one in Flushing, New York ; and one in Lake Grove, New York ). Buckley has also located a privately held copy of the Book of the Zodiac dating from 1919, which belonged to Lamea Abbas Amara in San Diego . Manuscripts of the Mandaean Book of John that are privately held by Mandaeans in the United States include: The Rbai Rafid Collection (RRC)

1128-582: The University of Waterloo (UW) later. One version of SCRIPT was created at MIT and the AA/CS at UW took over project development in 1974. The program was first used at UW in 1975. In the 1970s, SCRIPT was the only practical way to word process and format documents using a computer. By the late 1980s, the SCRIPT system had been extended to incorporate various upgrades. The initial implementation of SCRIPT at UW

1175-426: The bed of a press. In this process, called stereotyping , the entire form is pressed into a fine matrix such as plaster of Paris or papier mâché to create a flong , from which a positive form is cast in type metal . Advances such as the typewriter and computer would push the state of the art even farther ahead. Still, hand composition and letterpress printing have not fallen completely out of use, and since

1222-484: The concern of the casterman, is the "set", or width of each sort. Set width, like body size, is measured in points. In order to extend the working life of type, and to account for the finite sorts in a case of type, copies of forms were cast when anticipating subsequent printings of a text, freeing the costly type for other work. This was particularly prevalent in book and newspaper work where rotary presses required type forms to wrap an impression cylinder rather than set in

1269-490: The conversion to do-it-yourself easier, but also opened up a gap between skilled designers and amateurs. The advent of PostScript, supplemented by the PDF file format, provided a universal method of proofing designs and layouts, readable on major computers and operating systems. QuarkXPress had enjoyed a market share of 95% in the 1990s, but lost its dominance to Adobe InDesign from the mid-2000s onward. IBM created and inspired

1316-747: The end of each chapter or section is typically denoted by the Mandaean letters s—a ( ࡎࡀ ; also known as saka ), which are separated by a long ligature . Some scrolls are talismans ( zrazta ࡆࡓࡀࡆࡕࡀ ), amulets ( qmaha ࡒࡌࡀࡄࡀ ), or exorcisms ( pašar ࡐࡀࡔࡀࡓ or pišra ࡐࡉࡔࡓࡀ ), all of which are subtypes of phylacteries . Others consist of prayers such as rahmia ࡓࡀࡄࡌࡉࡀ ('devotions'), ʿniania ࡏࡍࡉࡀࡍࡉࡀ ('responses'), and rušuma ࡓࡅࡔࡅࡌࡀ (' "signing" prayers'). Many scrolls contain symbolic descriptions of rituals, such as various types of masiqta and masbuta rituals. Mandaean texts typically have colophons ( tarik ࡕࡀࡓࡉࡊ ) giving detailed information about

1363-503: The graphic arts industry. In the United States, these companies were located in rural Pennsylvania, New England or the Midwest, where labor was cheap and paper was produced nearby, but still within a few hours' travel time of the major publishing centers. In 1985, with the new concept of WYSIWYG (for What You See Is What You Get) in text editing and word processing on personal computers, desktop publishing became available, starting with

1410-466: The help of scripting languages. YesLogic's Prince is another one, which is based on CSS Paged Media. During the mid-1970s, Joe Ossanna , working at Bell Laboratories , wrote the troff typesetting program to drive a Wang C/A/T phototypesetter owned by the Labs; it was later enhanced by Brian Kernighan to support output to different equipment, such as laser printers . While its use has fallen off, it

1457-508: The introduction of digital typesetting, it has seen a revival as an artisanal pursuit. However, it is a small niche within the larger typesetting market. The time and effort required to manually compose the text led to several efforts in the 19th century to produce mechanical typesetting. While some, such as the Paige compositor , met with limited success, by the end of the 19th century, several methods had been devised whereby an operator working

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1504-863: The manuscripts are usually granted access by priests, similar to the level of respect given to the Guru Granth Sahib in Sikhism . Gloves are worn while handling copies of the Ginza Rabba that are used for liturgical purposes. Mandaean religious texts can be written in book or codex form ( draša ࡃࡓࡀࡔࡀ , sidra ࡎࡉࡃࡓࡀ , or ktaba ࡊࡕࡀࡁࡀ ) or as scrolls ( diwan ࡃࡉࡅࡀࡍ , šafta ࡔࡀࡐࡕࡀ , or šarḥ ࡔࡀࡓࡇ ) that are often illustrated. The illustrations, usually labeled with lengthy written explanations, typically contain abstract geometric drawings of uthras that are reminiscent of cubism or prehistoric rock art . In Mandaean texts,

1551-418: The negative film, resulting in a column of black type on white paper, or a galley . The galley was then cut up and used to create a mechanical drawing or paste up of a whole page. A large film negative of the page is shot and used to make plates for offset printing . The next generation of phototypesetting machines to emerge were those that generated characters on a cathode-ray tube display. Typical of

1598-411: The photo of the composing stick, a lower case 'q' looks like a 'd', a lower case 'b' looks like a 'p', a lower case 'p' looks like a 'b' and a lower case 'd' looks like a 'q'. This is reputed to be the origin of the expression "mind your p's and q's". It might just as easily have been "mind your b's and d's". A forgotten but important part of the process took place after the printing: after cleaning with

1645-473: The preparation of TeX documents through its export capability. GNU TeXmacs (whose name is a combination of TeX and Emacs , although it is independent from both of these programs) is a typesetting system which is at the same time a WYSIWYG word processor . SILE borrows some algorithms from TeX and relies on other libraries such as HarfBuzz and ICU , with an extensible core engine developed in Lua . By default, SILE's input documents can be composed in

1692-740: The rest of the DC manuscripts being scrolls. A list of manuscripts in the Drower Collection, based on primarily on Buckley (2010), as well as Drower (1937) and other sources, is given below. The manuscripts are abbreviated DC. Timeline of major publications of important Mandaean scriptures: Typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical type (or sort ) in mechanical systems or glyphs in digital systems representing characters (letters and other symbols). Stored types are retrieved and ordered according to

1739-424: The scribes who had transcribed them, as well as dates, lineages, and other historical information. Drower (1953) recognizes six main groups of Mandaean literature. Little is known about the redactors or authors of the texts. The contents date to both pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. The oldest Mandaean magical text is dated to the 4th and 5th centuries CE. During the past few decades, Majid Fandi Al-Mubaraki ,

1786-472: The smaller texts in journal articles, while other larger texts have been published as monographs. Many texts remain unpublished. Drower donated MSS Drower 1–53 to the Bodleian Library in 1958. MS Drower 54 ( The Coronation of the Great Šišlam ) was given to the library by Lady Drower in 1961, and MS Drower 55 (Drower's personal notebook) was added in 1986. DC 1–5, 22, 30, 31, 38, 45, and 53 are codices, with

1833-431: The text for a page. The size of the type was determined by the size of the character on the face of the sort. A compositor would need to physically swap out the sorts for a different size to change the font size. During typesetting, individual sorts are picked from a type case with the right hand, and set from left to right into a composing stick held in the left hand, appearing to the typesetter as upside down. As seen in

1880-646: The type were the Alphanumeric APS2 (1963), IBM 2680 (1967), I.I.I. VideoComp (1973?), Autologic APS5 (1975), and Linotron 202 (1978). These machines were the mainstay of phototypesetting for much of the 1970s and 1980s. Such machines could be "driven online" by a computer front-end system or took their data from magnetic tape. Type fonts were stored digitally on conventional magnetic disk drives. Computers excel at automatically typesetting and correcting documents. Character-by-character, computer-aided phototypesetting was, in turn, rapidly rendered obsolete in

1927-542: The typographic ability or flexibility required for complicated book layout, graphics, mathematics, or advanced hyphenation and justification rules ( H and J ). By 2000, this industry segment had shrunk because publishers were now capable of integrating typesetting and graphic design on their own in-house computers. Many found the cost of maintaining high standards of typographic design and technical skill made it more economical to outsource to freelancers and graphic design specialists. The availability of cheap or free fonts made

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1974-544: The various diwan s , are illustrated scrolls . Mandaean copyists or scribes (Mandaic: sapra ) may transcribe texts as a meritorious deed for one's own forgiveness of sins, or they may be hired to copy a text for another person. Mandaean sacred scriptures, such as the Ginza Rabba are traditionally kept in wooden chests wrapped in layers of white cotton and silk cloth. These protected manuscripts are generally not touched by ordinary laypeople, although learned laymen ( yalufa ) who demonstrate proper knowledge and respect for

2021-521: Was a SCRIPT variant developed at IBM in the 1980s. DWScript is a version of SCRIPT for MS-DOS, named after its author, D. D. Williams, but was never released to the public and only used internally by IBM. Script is still available from IBM as part of the Document Composition Facility for the z/OS operating system. The standard generalized markup language ( SGML ) was based upon IBM Generalized Markup Language (GML). GML

2068-631: Was a set of macros on top of IBM Script. DSSSL is an international standard developed to provide a stylesheets for SGML documents. XML is a successor of SGML. XSL-FO is most often used to generate PDF files from XML files. The arrival of SGML/XML as the document model made other typesetting engines popular. Such engines include Datalogics Pager, Penta, Miles 33's OASYS, Xyvision's XML Professional Publisher , FrameMaker , and Arbortext . XSL-FO compatible engines include Apache FOP , Antenna House Formatter , and RenderX 's XEP . These products allow users to program their SGML/XML typesetting process with

2115-556: Was documented in the May 1975 issue of the Computing Centre Newsletter, which noted some the advantages of using SCRIPT: The article also pointed out SCRIPT had over 100 commands to assist in formatting documents, though 8 to 10 of these commands were sufficient to complete most formatting jobs. Thus, SCRIPT had many of the capabilities computer users generally associate with contemporary word processors. SCRIPT/VS

2162-460: Was then fed to control a casting machine. The Ludlow Typograph involved hand-set matrices, but otherwise used hot metal. By the early 20th century, the various systems were nearly universal in large newspapers and publishing houses. Phototypesetting or "cold type" systems first appeared in the early 1960s and rapidly displaced continuous casting machines. These devices consisted of glass or film disks or strips (one per font ) that spun in front of

2209-419: Was typed a second time. If the two lines were identical a bell rang and the machine produced a punched paper tape corresponding to the text. With the completion of a block of lines the typesetter fed the corresponding paper tapes into a phototypesetting device that mechanically set type outlines printed on glass sheets into place for exposure onto a negative film . Photosensitive paper was exposed to light through

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