The Nedj Nedj databases 7 Supplementaries 7.8: Transcription characters / 7.9: Summary line / 7.10: Status field

7.8 Transcription characters and respelling equivalents

There are two bright blue bars in the ‘Mainly headings’ lower central region of the Overview screen:

Fig. 7.81 In each row are pairs of characters: transcription followed by respelling equivalents

Mac cht bar

The Mac cht bar features pairs of characters separated by a slash. The first character in each pair is a unicode character, and is the official symbol used for transcription of Ancient Egyptian words. The second member of each pair is the respelling equivalent used in this Hierolex database.

The content of the whole bar appears as soon as the word ‘Egypt’ is typed in the bright pink field headed DB . . .

Fig. 7.82 Type ‘Egypt’ in the {DB} [source DB] field and the Mac cht bar comes into operation

. . . towards the right-hand end of the illustration above. As described in Table 9 above, this information is drawn from the related database entitled ‘Mac cht sets’. Consequently although this complicated information appears on every record, it has been typed out only once, and is called up by just typing (or copying as in Fig. 7.62) the much simpler word ‘Egypt’ into the appropriate field in each record, as just described.

EAWB bar

In exactly the same manner, typing ‘EAWB’ into the adjacent {source EAWB} field brings in Wallace-Budge’s transcription characters, and the corresponding characters used in this database.

7.9 Summary line

The automatically generated summary line for every record has been repeatedly mentioned in the course of this description of the Hierolex database because it is central to the database’s use. As has been said earlier (see Section 2.16) the summarily line, until it has been manually activated, appears without without hieroglyph images:

Fig. 7.91 A summary line before activation

After activation

Fig. 7.92 The same summary line after activation (cmnd 3)

The line is activated by the key combination cmnd 3, occasioning the hieroglyphs for the word to appear. The combination cmnd 2 transfers the summary line to the green {meaning clue} field as described in the Mainly Language Info’ section earlier (see Fig. 2.166 in particular).

7.10 Status field

As was indicated in the ‘Columns and Fields section 4 above, ‘JS’ in the pink {status} field indicates that the original record has been varied in some way by the database author JS (Jeremy Steele). This occurs when a word is extracted from a multiple-word entry and examined on its own.

Fig. 7.101 The second record, extracted from the first, is marked JS in the {status} field

In the first record above, the small pink {status} field at the left is vacant, the original source (in this case Wallace Budge (EAWB)) being shown in the source fields at the right.

In the second record, ‘JS’ in this field indicates that your database compiler is responsible for the entry concerned. For the word ihAyit in this case has been extracted from the full Wallace Budge (EAWB) record appearing above it.