Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew email & RTL

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Joel Nothman <jnothman AT student.usyd.edu.au>
  • Cc: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew email & RTL
  • Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 13:23:53 -0700

On 17/04/2004 18:28, Joel Nothman wrote:



Also I think you have to set up this key combination as an option somewhere. It might be the default in XP. Probably it doesn't so much shift from RTL to LTR or vice versa as shift between two different keyboards, Hebrew and English if those are the two you have set up. Things will be more complicated if you have more keyboards.


No, this is not what it does. Whether text and its punctuation should read right-to-left or left-to-right is independent of whether its text itself starts, ends with or contains left-to-right or right-to-left text.

So, for instance, in my WinXP setup, if I want to write a word in Hebrew amidst a paragraph of English text, I switch to the Hebrew keyboard mapping (by pressing left-alt-shift on my machine), type the word, and change back to english... Still, the paragraph itself is aligned left to right.

If I want to write a paragraph in Hebrew, maybe with some english words in it, I have to (1) change into Hebrew keyboard mapping so I can type and (2) make the paragraph right to left, by pressing right-ctrl-shift, so that the punctuation and word order is shown correctly.

Interestingly, I haven't found anywhere to change this keyboard shortcut. I haven't even found anywhere that tells me about it. I just found it by chance. Then again, I haven't been looking for it: I didn't expect such a feature to exist in all programs, so just put buttons on the word processing toolbar. But it turns out full right-to-left capability is available in essentially all text-boxes in WinXP etc.

- Joel


Interesting. I hadn't come across this one either. Does it work even in Notepad? It doesn't in my Windows 2000. Something of the sort works in Wordpad, but not exactly as you describe e.g. shift + right alt switches the keyboard to Hebrew, and some combination made the paragraph right aligned but I'm not sure what.

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





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page