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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] question about Song of the Sea

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Dora Smith <villandra AT austin.rr.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] question about Song of the Sea
  • Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 03:21:15 -0800

On 30/03/2004 17:29, Dora Smith wrote:

Ah - OK. THe only thing I now don't undrestand is what is the difference between standard Hebrew fonts and nonstandard Hebrew fonts. The two I have that come up in Outlook Express and WORD are WL HebrewParsons, and WP Hebrew David, both of which are ones you guys recommended. I think it's using the WL HEbrew Parsons one.
<mailto:villandra AT austin.rr.com>

I didn't recommend these fonts (at least within the last five years) and never would. They are non-standard fonts. I suspect that they are symbol encoded fonts. In any case, they put Hebrew letters in places where they should not be*, and by doing so bypass the mechanisms built into Windows and other OSs for displaying Hebrew right to left (which means that you have to type them in backwards). Five years ago this was a sensible thing to do, because only a few computers (mainly those with Middle Eastern versions of Windows) supported the right to left display methods. Now most computers are able to display Hebrew right to left - anything with Windows 2000 and XP, also Windows 95/98/ME with a Internet Explorer 5.5 or later installed, also recent versions of MacOS and Linux.

* Some further explanation of this: Originally these fonts were designed on a basis like replacing A with aleph, B with bet etc, and they still work like this on older systems. But they were also marked as symbol fonts to indicate that they were not useful for ordinary text. As a result, on newer Unicode compatible Windows systems, the codes used are a special block in the Unicode Private Use Area. These codes are displayed as question marks when a non-symbol font is selected, but the "symbols" reappear when the symbol font is selected. Try selecting the font called "Symbol"; probably your Hebrew will turn into Greek!

The fonts I recommended are SBL Hebrew and Ezra SIL. Try also the font David or Guttman David which may also be on your system. You can use the standard Microsoft fonts Times New Roman, Arial etc (recent versions of them), but these don't look so good and holam is misplaced. You can type these with the Hebrew keyboard built into Windows 2000/XP, or with the special methods which come with SBL Hebrew and with Ezra SIL.

This Unicode Hebrew is compatible with what is used in Israel, and you should be able to use it for e-mail with Israelis, although perhaps not with Israelis using old Unix systems (but they probably have to use English anyway).

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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