Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 18/01/2005 15:44, Heard, Christopher wrote:

> On 1/15/05 9:04 AM, "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
>  
>
> > > here's the first word of genesis:
> > >
> > > ty#)rb
> > >
> > >      
> > I just see Latin script backwards. But then I don't have SPEzra
> > installed. And I note that if I did I would still not see correctly
> > positioned vowels.
> >    
>
> Well, I _do_ have SPEzra installed, and SPTiberian and the rest of that
> suite of fonts, and I still just see Latin script backwards. As I mentioned
> in another post, that's because font information isn't transmitted in a
> text-only e-mail. ...

But Jim's e-mail from which this was extracted was not text-only, it was 
"Content-Type: multipart/mixed" i.e. with the same content repeated as 
text-only and as HTML, and the HTML source contains the line "<font 
face=3D"SPEzra">ty#)rb<font face=3D"Times New Roman"><br>". In fact as 
these are the first "<font face=...>"'s in the HTML, the message as I 
saw it switched from Arial to Times New Roman at this point. But then my 
copy came direct from Jim, not via the list.

Does the source of Jim's e-mail as you received it contain HTML as well 
as plain text? If not, the problem may be that the server of this list 
is stripping out the HTML portion. That is I think a reasonable thing 
for a list server to do, but it certainly rules out Jim's proposed way 
of sending non-Unicode Hebrew, at least for this list.

> ... That's why Unicode is a superior option: you don't have to
> encode font information, just character information (which is what a
> text-only stream does).
>
>  
Agreed!

In another posting, you wrote:

> You also need Unicode-savvy software applications, e.g., your
> e-mail client and your word processor and so on. For PCs, the latest
> versions of Microsoft products;

No, you don't need to pay Microsoft outrageous amounts for their latest 
products. What comes built into Windows XP, which includes Internet 
Explorer and Outlook Express as well as Notepad and Wordpad, supports 
Unicode Hebrew adequately with the right fonts. And the latest versions 
of products from many sources, not just Microsoft, also support it 
adequately. With OpenOffice and Mozilla (or Firefox and Thunderbird) 
your Unicode Hebrew support is just as good as with Microsoft Office.

The only exception to this one is if you need to display accents or 
cantillation marks. Microsoft has improved its Unicode display driver, 
Uniscribe, to support these properly with the fonts Ezra SIL and SBL 
Hebrew, but the new version is so far distributed only with Office 2003 
and a very few other applications, and can (officially) be used only 
with them.

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



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