Customising SERA

  Fidel is a highly phonetical script set, but not perfect.  In a few
instances among the languages that use Fidel for its written script, a
letter will not have a sound consistant with its form class.  The
clearest example for this is in Amharic where the first form "h"s will
have a sound equivalent to that of the fourth form (`', `', `'
sound the same as `', `', `').  To model in Latin the different
sounds associated with a particular Fidel member, SERA allows for
duplicity of the Latin representation.  One such important instance is
the choice of `e' AND `a' to represent the first lone vowel letter `'.
`a' is the natural choice in Amharic and `e' is more logical in most
languages.  Both `a' and `e' are recoginized for `' when converting
Latin->Ethiopic; but the user must decide on a choise of `a' or `e' for
converting Ethiopic->Latin.

  The default conversion in mule is to write `' as `a'.  You may set
Mule to always convert `' as `e' by adding the line below to your
`~/.emacs' file:

     (setq ethio-use-tigrigna-style t)

  As discussed before (*Note Fidel Input::), the natural choise of `Wu'
or `W'' for 9th form characters will differ between people.  `Wu' is the
default conversion into Latin, but you may change this to `W'' by adding
the following line to your `~/.emacs' file:

     (setq ethio-W-sixth-always t)

  SERA also permits `'' as a separator between two Latin vowels when the
user thinks it aids clarity.  The deault in Mule is not to insert `''
between vowels, you may change this by again adding the following line
to your `~/.emacs' file:

     (setq ethio-quote-vowel-always t)

  As discussed before (see *Note Ethiopic Numeric Input::), Ethiopic
numerals may be written in several forms and interpreted in the same
way.  Likewise you have these same choices for SERA output.

  For example, consider the Latin sequence `\10\9\100\80\7' for
`'.  The Latin form is considered to be in the lowest level of
reduction, or "reduction-level 0".  You can choose to write out in
reduction-level 0 by including the following line in your `~/.emacs'
file:

     (setq ethio-numeric-reduction 0)

  The next level in reduction is the form `\109100807' which can be set
by:

     (setq ethio-numeric-reduction 1)

  The final level in reduction is the form `\10900807' which can be set
by:

     (setq ethio-numeric-reduction 2)

  These three reduction levels for numbers are offered, because it can
not be known at this time which may ultimately become the preferred
form.