Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 14/01/2005 23:27, DJNordlund AT aol.com wrote:

> <>
> ...
>
> No, when using unicode fonts it is not necessary to have "the correct" 
> font
> installed. That is the benefit of unicode. All you need is some unicode
> font that supports the language you are interested in. Unicode fonts 
> like MS
> Arial Unicode, and Palatino Linotype support (at least) English, 
> polytonic
> Greek, and Hebrew. Those fonts can appropriately render Hebrew or 
> Greek text
> that is written using those fonts, or any other unicode fonts, such as 
> SIL EZRA
> unicode or Cyberbit Basic, etc., as long as UTF-8 encoding is used to 
> send
> the text (as pointed out by Peter Kirk).


Actually you don't need any of these special fonts to read Unicode 
Hebrew. At least on Windows XP and 2000, I think also on Windows 98 with 
Internet Explorer 5 or later, the system standard fonts Times New Roman, 
Arial and Courier New support legible Hebrew. You will just get the 
following problems:

1) The holam dot is wrongly shown as a spacing character;
2) No support for accents/cantillation marks (you will see square boxes 
instead);
3) The text may be very small, as Dave noted;
4) The fixed spacing Courier New, often the default for plain text 
e-mail, looks very ugly in Hebrew.

For better looking results, use Ezra SIL (not SIL Ezra which is not 
Unicode), SBL Hebrew etc.

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



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