Questions about Buke Himeni Hawaii

I'm hoping a local can answer this question for me.

I'm working on a new edition of the Buke Hemeni Hawaii, the black
little fat hymnal, and I keep running across words in it which contain
italicized letters. For example (italic letters enclosed in {}),
{A}kua, o{e}, {i}, ikei{a}, {o}lelo. While it's generally the same
words with the same letters over and over again, they aren't always
italicized. However, they're always vowels.

Anyone know what the convention is about?

Thanks-

-Chiem

On 2005-05-03 06:15:01 -1000, nobody@imaginary-host.danbirchall.com
(Dan Birchall) said:

> Hmmm... from those words you listed, I think the vowels in
> question are ones preceded by an 'okina. Perhaps the last
> time the book was typeset or whatever, they didn't have an
> appropriate character to use? Do other letters have a
> kahako (line over vowel) anywhere? Modern computer fonts
> offer both the okina character and the kahako as an accent;
> when my Mac is in Hawaiian Unicode mode, the 'okina is
> option-apostrophe and vowels with kahako are option-vowel.

I love Unicode. I even switched from MS Word to Pages so I could take
advantage of it. The problem is that everyone expects manuscripts as
..doc files, which they usually open with Word. Apparently Microsoft
avoids Unicode (it wasn't their idea), so all the 'okinas and kahakos
get replaced by funny character strings. (Yes, I know there are
Hawaiian fonts, but journals don't like to be told what fonts to use.)

--
Gerard Fryer
Hawaii Inst. of Geophysics & Planetology

> Hmmm... from those words you listed, I think the vowels in
> question are ones preceded by an 'okina.

I really don't know. Someone else said that the letters might be due
to arguments about how many letters are in the Hawaiian alphabet when
the book was published. The book contains no okina or kahako
(published in 1870), but there are scattered apostrophes in the book
occasionally, which I assume are supposed to be okina.

The letters italicized seem to be strange to me for this to be either.
For example, aloha is written {a}loha, aloh{a}, and {a}loh{a}
depending on where in the book you are.

Someone else suggested it might have something to do with where you
are supposed to accent the word in the song.

I've decided to print two editions, one with the original apostrophes
and italicized letters. I'll try to do a second printing with the
italicized letters changed to normal letters and kahako and okina
added.

Thanks for your input.

On 2005-05-04 05:55:06 -1000, nobody@imaginary-host.danbirchall.com
(Dan Birchall) said:

>
> gerard@hawaii.edu (Gerard Fryer) wrote:
>>
>> On 2005-05-03 06:15:01 -1000, nobody@imaginary-host.danbirchall.com
>> (Dan Birchall) said:
>>
>>> Hmmm... from those words you listed, I think the vowels in
>>> question are ones preceded by an 'okina. Perhaps the last
>>> time the book was typeset or whatever, they didn't have an
>>> appropriate character to use? Do other letters have a
>>> kahako (line over vowel) anywhere? Modern computer fonts
>>> offer both the okina character and the kahako as an accent;
>>> when my Mac is in Hawaiian Unicode mode, the 'okina is
>>> option-apostrophe and vowels with kahako are option-vowel.
>>
>> I love Unicode. I even switched from MS Word to Pages so I could take
>> advantage of it. The problem is that everyone expects manuscripts as
>> .doc files, which they usually open with Word. Apparently Microsoft
>> avoids Unicode (it wasn't their idea), so all the 'okinas and kahakos
>> get replaced by funny character strings. (Yes, I know there are
>> Hawaiian fonts, but journals don't like to be told what fonts to use.)
>
> Word : mac 2004 seems to have no problems with Unicode-based Hawaiian
> characters I type, and I'd expect either the most recent version of
> Word
> for Windows, or the _next_ version, to be similar. I tend to use PDF
> for interplatform compatibility, though, I guess.

Ha! That's my problem. I was too cheap to buy the latest MS Office.
iWork (Pages + Keynote) was cheaper so I got that instead. I'll try
sending my Pages-generated .doc files to Word users on Macs and PCs to
see if the Hawaiian characters survive.

--
Gerard Fryer
Hawaii Inst. of Geophysics & Planetology