Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Gerrit <g.de.blaauw2 AT chello.nl>]

Jim West wrote:

> I'm not sure if you can see it or not- but in the sample I received 
> the letters are separated by the vowels- a full space being devoted to 
> each.

I can see them properly. For the Hebrew to be displayed correctly on a 
Windows computer:
- Your operating system should support Unicode (so it should be Windows 
2000 or XP).
- In Mozilla Thunderbird, in the Fonts settings (Tools, Options, Fonts), 
select Unicode (UTF-8) as encoding scheme for both Incoming and Outgoing 
mail.
- In Mozilla Thunderbird, in the Fonts settings, specify your fonts for 
Hebrew; select fonts *above* the line, preferably Ezra SIL or SBL Hebrew 
(but all fonts above the line will probably do). E.g.:
 Fonts for: Hebrew
 Proportional: Serif
 Serif: Ezra SIL
 Sans-serif: Ezra SIL
 Monospace: Ezra SIL

This is what I wrote earlier today, but somehow it didn't make it to the 
list:

My hunch is that additional transliteration will always be necessary, 
not only because of the many operating systems in use today (some of 
which cannot handle Hebrew fonts), but also because the online archives 
should be readable for anyone (what a pity, by the way, that the 
b-hebrew archives are no longer searchable!).

No one so far has brought up the subject of how to *write* Hebrew 
characters and vowels on a computer. Well, I didn't know how to, and 
I'll share what I found with those who are interested, for what it's worth.
For those who have an operating system that supports Unicode, the 
easiest way to write Hebrew would be (I think) to install the Biblical 
Hebrew (SIL) keyboard. "The SIL Biblical Hebrew keyboard tries as far as 
possible to match the positioning of Hebrew letters to English phonetic 
cognates, e.g. ק =Q, י =Y. This intuitive layout is only partial, due to 
dissimilarity between Hebrew and English graphemes, and some assignments 
are arbitrary, e.g. שׂ =F. Note that vocalisation and cantillation marks 
are distributed across all four states of this keyboard, and that some 
characters can be input in more than one way." (from 
BiblicalHebrew(SIL)Manual.pdf, which comes with the Ezra SIL Hebrew 
Unicode Fonts package and describes very clearly how to install the BH 
keyboard). (To use cantillation, you'll need MS Office (or at least 
Arial Unicode MS)).

http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=EzraSIL_Home&_sc=1

שָׁלוֹם,
Gerrit