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b-hebrew - Re: Unicode, was Re: [b-hebrew] Eden & Rivers - Genesis 2:10

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: Unicode, was Re: [b-hebrew] Eden & Rivers - Genesis 2:10
  • Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 12:03:50 +0100

On 15/05/2005 05:41, Karl Randolph wrote:

Steve:

Not only the email clients, but some OS are not unicode aware yet.


I don't think this is true of the latest version of any general purpose OS which is currently being supported. The issue is rather that some people are continuing to use old and often unsupported versions of OSs. Of course these old versions will never become Unicode aware, they will just become more and more obsolete. This is like people who continue to drive a Model T Ford complaining that not all cars have air conditioning, and even suggesting that Ford does not provide air conditioning. If you want air conditioning, you need to buy a modern car, from Ford or almost any other manufacturer. Similarly with software.

Anyway, it is perfectly possible to run a Unicode aware mail client on an OS which is not Unicode aware.

Many people are still running older versions of Windows™ on their computers,
which are not unicode compliant. ...


Is anyone on this list still running Windows 3.1 or older? Although Windows 95 and 98 do not provide native Unicode support, when Internet Explorer 5 or later is installed on such a system Unicode (and right-to-left script) support is added to the system, providing full support for reading Unicode e-mail and web pages, although support for composing in Unicode is limited.

... Until recently I was running OS 9 on my 11 year old Macintosh, which had
separately installed language packs—the Hebrew which I had installed could
read and write the consonants, but some of the vowels threw it for a loop. ...


For better or for worse, an 11 year old computer is as obsolete as a Model T Ford.

... Now it’s running OS X.2 which is better.


And which has full system level Unicode support, including for Hebrew (although sadly only a limited number of applications make use of that support.)

I understand that WindowsXP is Unicode aware so you can use it to read
Hebrew, but I don’t know how to use it to type Hebrew.


I do. If anyone needs to know, please ask me.

The latest versions of GNOME and KDE on Linux are unicode aware, at least for
reading. But I haven’t tried them for writing Hebrew. But some people running
Linux prefer using text based shells which are ASCII only.


Not true. I am not an expert here, but as I understand it text based shells use the system locale, which can be set to Unicode UTF-8. But there are problems with Hebrew because the text based shells do not support right to left.

On the web things are not as clean. From a Macintosh, those versions
requiring a SBL font do not look good in either Camino or Safari browsers. ...


This is because the SBL font is explicitly intended only for use on Windows.

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



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