Friday, January 8, 2010

Proofreading, part 24

Talking of inaccessible. This part of the proofreading process is hard for me to access. I don't own the fancy software, not many people do since it's so expensive (multiple thousands of dollars, I understand). Most people send their scrolls away to have someone else do the scanning part.

Well, that's hard for me, because the people who have the software are all people who don't hold with women writing Torahs. If I take my Torah to one of them and ask them to scan it, they refuse, saying they can't have anything to do with it, it's bad for their reputations, etc. Which I understand, but it doesn't exactly make me leap for joy. So I send my work to someone who sends it to someone who sends it to someone and eventually it's anonymised enough that it can go to the scanner without anyone directly violating anyone else's principles or reputation.

Sigh; not the way I'd choose to work, given the choice, but until there are enough liberal scribes to make buying the software a sensible investment, it's going to stay as it is.

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