FAQ

Questions:

General

Installation

Use

Troubleshooting

Improvements

Answers:

General

What is Paradigmatic?

Paradigmatic is a Apple Mac application to view, edit, and test a user’s knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek verb paradigms.

Who is it for?
Any student of Biblical languages should find this program useful. It assumes a certain level of knowledge of Greek and Hebrew – i.e. it won’t teach you grammar, but it will help you drill in and learn what you already know.

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Installation

What are the system requirements?
Paradigmatic requires at least OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It may run on Panther or earlier, but this has not been tested.

How do I install Paradigmatic?
Download the latest version of Paradigmatic. Unzip the file, and drag the Paradigmatic icon to your Applications folder.

When I run the application, I can’t see any data. What’s going on?
When the application starts up, it checks to see if the data store is up-to-date. This data store is automatically created in ~\Library\Application Support\Paradigmatic
where ‘~’ is your home directory. If something has gone wrong, the data store (calledDataStore.pdmtc) may be absent, or empty.

If this is the case, then locate Paradigmatic in your Applications directory. Control-click or right-click on the application, and choose ‘Show Package Contents‘ from the pop-up menu. Navigate to ‘Contents‘, then ‘Resources‘. You should see a file called ‘DataStore.pdmtc‘.

Copy this to the Application Support\Paradigmatic folder (see above). Note that if you hold down the option key as you drag the file it will copy the file rather than move it, which is probably a good idea, as you can re-do this process if you accidentally delete some data whilst using the program.

I’ve just upgraded, but the data is all old/wrong. What’s going on?
This is a variation on the above question, where for some reason the data store has not been updated from the new installation. Follow the same process to as above to copy over the data store.

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Use

How do I add a paradigm?
In the Editor Screen (either Greek or Hebrew), select the ‘Add’ button. Choose the appropriate Root and other information of the desired paradigm, and hit ‘OK’. For Hebrew, if you select the ‘Prepare content’ checkbox, data from similar paradigms will be used to create a template which you can then modify. If this is not selected, or nothing similar exists, then an empty paradigm is created.

How do I edit paradigm entries?
Select the ‘Add’ or ‘Edit’ buttons next to the relevant paradigm entry in the Editor window. An editor sheet will then be displayed. The procedure here is slightly different for Greek and Hebrew.

For Hebrew, you will see a box for each Hebrew character.
To edit, click the character you wish to modify:

  • A Left-click will bring up a menu for vowels. You can select a vowel, or clear the current selection.
  • A Right-click or Ctrl-click will bring up a menu for consonants. You can select a consonant, or clear the current selection. Clearing the consonant will clear any other data for the character, such as vowel or dagesh info.
  • A Command-click (?-click) will bring up a menu for punctuation. You can use this menu to toggle on or off dagesh points, meteg characters, or accents.

For Greek, the editor sheet is simpler. Inbuilt grammar rules will attempt to construct the entry for you, which should work fine for well-behaved verbal roots (e.g. ???, or basic contract-verbs). If you wish to modify this entry, select/deselect the appropriate check-boxes. To enter Greek characters you will need to use a unicode keyboard (follow these instructions to set this up properly)

Selecting ‘OK’ at the entry sheet will commit your changes to the paradigm; pressing ‘Cancel’ or the Escape key will not save any changes.

Can I use a root that is not currently listed?
Open the Preferences window (under the Paradigmatic menu). In the Advanced Tab, click the ‘Edit Roots’ button. In this sheet you will be able to add or remove roots, and assign irregularities. Be very careful with this editing, as deleting roots currently in use may render your database corrupt.

How do I change the font?
Open the Preferences window (under the Paradigmatic menu). In the Font tab there are options for selecting the display fonts for Greek and Hebrew. These changes will be applied once you hit the ‘OK’ button. Separate fonts can be used for each language.
Note that the paradigm data is all in Unicode, so only fonts that are capable of displaying unicode characters (specifically the Hebrew unicode set) will work. Cardo is a pretty good choice, although dagesh points and meteg characters sometimes have problems with correct alignment. Paradigmatic has been designed to work well with Cardo.

My font went beserk with certain paradigm entries. What’s happening?
This applies to Hebrew entries. There a problem with certain Mac Unicode fonts, such as New Penimum MT. Specifically, the meteg and accent characters don’t exist in all fonts, so the Mac text system rolls back to a known font that does have characters defined for those unicode values; by default this is Lucida Grande. This affects the entire character (i.e. consonant, vowel, dagesh, etc). This means that if you have selected a font that does not have a complete Hebrew Unicode definition, certain paradigm entries will not display properly, and you will have a mixture of Lucida Grande and New Penimum MT in the same word, for example.
To overcome this problem, choose a well-defined Hebrew unicode font, such as Cardo, or use the system defaults.

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Troubleshooting

When I run the application, I can’t see any data. What’s going on?
See�this answer.

I’ve just upgraded, but the data is all old. What’s going on?
See�this answer.

On Save or Quit, I get a message about validation errors. How do I fix this?

This is a bug. If you can contact me with the precise action you did to make this happen, that would be very helpful for me.

Unfortunately, there is not much I can say for definitive action. Try the following steps:

  • If you’ve just added a paradigm, try deleting what you have just created.
  • Look for paradigms that have ‘null’ as their root, stem, or aspect.
  • Open up the Preferences window, and click ‘Paradigm Entries’ in the Advanced Tab. If there are any entries in this list that have an invalid Paradigm entry, try deleting them and saving again.
  • If all else fails, quit the program. The next time you open it, the data will be at the last saved point, which will be a stable state.

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Improvements

I’ve found an error in paradigm <x>. What should I do?
Firstly, you can edit the offending entry using the built-in editor (select the ‘Editor’ button on the welcome screen).
Secondly, contact me with the change. This is important so that the change can be included in future versions. You can do this by one of the following:

How do I support Paradigmatic?

I’m more than happy to provide Paradigmatic free of charge, especially to students learning to translate the Bible. If, however, you would like to support the ongoing work of developing, testing, and supporting Paradigmatic, you can make a donation by clicking on the PayPal button below.

Thanks.