Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dora Smith" <villandra AT austin.rr.com>]

The message below is an old message from this list.   It evolved into a
discussion on open fonts - not which way I want to go.

The file I keep getting told to download in order to display Hebrew on some
web pages, that I also need to display unicode Hebrew in Outlook Express, is
apparently called Unicode.   It specifically says to download Unicode, then
told me it didn't find it on my IE 5.5 installation CD.

According to my research Unicode is also known as USP10.DLL, and also known
as "Uniscribe processor".

It ships with new versions of IE, WORD and other things.    But Microsoft
does not still offer any freestanding version of its Hebrew language
support.

It turns out I actually have Unicode in my system file where it belongs -
but it is too old.  I have version 1.0325.2180.1, at 337 K or something.
Version 1.405.2416.1 was the first version to support Hebrew - and the popup
message I am getting specifically says that the file I am looking for is 449
K - though how it knows the size of the file if it can't find it and needs
me to insert a "windows update CD" is beyond me.

Peter Kirk sent me something he calls Hebrew Service Pack for IE 5.5 or
something that I haven't tried to install yet because I don't know what it
is and he didn't know if it would install.

According to information on the web installing Hebrew support could be as
easy  as booting my computer into DOS and switching USP10.DLL files.
Apparently you can't switch it with Windows running because it is an active
system file.

If someone has a version of IE - like IE 6, or WORD atleast 2000, or
anything else that has a verison of Uniscribe that supports Hebrew, will
they please e-mail me at villandra AT austin.rr.com  a copy of their USP10.DLL
file.  It should be found in your Windows/ Winnt32 system folder.  Hopefully
it is not ncessary to boot into DOS to copy it.

Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, Texas
villandra AT austin.rr.com

> The issues of Hebrew fonts on and off the web, and unicode are enourmously
> complex. The reason that many people have (limited) success with
> displaying
> Hebrew on their windows system is due to Uniscribe, which is a dll
> (usp10.dll) in the windows\system directory that gives instructions to
> windows programs as to how to arrange some of the Hebrew characters in the
> Hebrew unicode region. This is still however a problem, as
> Uniscribe does a
> fairly poor job at the moment. The best long term solution is open type.
> There is only one open type Hebrew font that I know of, Guttman Vilna, and
> it is only available at the moment legally, as far as I know, with Office
> XP. Open Type fonts are fonts that carry detailed instructions for how to
> render combinations of glyphs, which is what is needed for Hebrew
> (mind you,
> other languages are much more complex than Hebrew).
>