Summary of Changes in SERA-97

  1. ea is now used for (e3).

  2. e3 is now interpreted as (e)3.

  3. \~X is added for ``Ornament'' .

  4. Ethiopic numbers are now prefixed by ` rather than \ .

  5. SERA escapes are recognized only in Ethiopic text zones except for \ , \\ , and \~lang which should be detected by SERA lexers that also lex non-Ethiopic text.

  6. Except for the bilingual escape, all escapes MUST be terminated by white space (" " \n \r \t etc.) or the start of another escape (ala TEX).

  7. Escapes to set document defaults are: 
          \~`:    Use : for Ge'ez Wordspace `: (The Default if Unspecified)

      \~-:    Use : for Ge'ez Colon -:

      \~?     Use  ? for Ge'ez Stylized Question Mark  (The Default)
              Use `? for Ge'ez 3-Dot Question Mark     (The Default)

      \~`|    Use  ? for Ge'ez 3-Dot Question Mark
              Use `? for Ge'ez Stylized Question Mark
  8. The Verbatim Mode escape, \! , is now given by \~! .

  9. Primary and Secondary Languages may set by:

    \~languagePrimary~languageSecondary

    which sets the interpretation for an unadorned bilingual escape \ . languagePrimary and languageSecondary are ISO 639 two or three character language names (i.e. \~amh~eng for Amharic and English).

    Example Usage: 
        \~amh~eng   this is amharic        (Set Primary/Secondary)
    \~tir       this is tigrigna       (New Third Language)
    \           this is amharic        (Return To Primary)
    \           this is english        (Secondary)
    \~ar~gz     this is arabic         (Reset Primary/Secondary)
    \           this is ge'ez          (Secondary)