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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Mozilla Thunderbird mail software

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Mozilla Thunderbird mail software
  • Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:30:53 +0000

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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