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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew keyboard & font size

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Herman Meester <crazymulgogi AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew keyboard & font size
  • Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:45:14 +0000

On 19/01/2006 22:29, Herman Meester wrote:

...


Peter,
if it's purely the issue of proper display of Hebrew we're talking
about, then there is really no reason why Linux would be harder to use
than Windows. If someone had a PC and would want to install a (more or
less fresh) Linux DVD or CD on it (available with any Linux magazine
just about any month of the year), it would take less than an hour (of
merely waiting!) to -easily- install the entire OS and desktop
environment; during installation, just activate a few packages with a
few mouseclicks (like a few nice fonts and the SCIM input method) and
Hebrew is properly displayed everywhere and you can type it, in any
field, right to left, with any shortcut you'd like to give to it.
I can hardly imagine that in Windows it's any different, or even
easier, but I haven't used Windows for a few years, I have to admit.


If this is true, I am very pleased, but it means that there has been a real revolution in Linux support for Hebrew over the last nine months, that progress has taken place in that time which our moderator Kirk Lowery expected to take five years, when he wrote (on 29th April 2005, in response to Dave Washburn enquring abou Hebrew support in Fedora Core 3):

Make sure that it is the Unicode Ezra font. Using Debian 'sid', with
SBLHebrew, the vowels are offset to the left; the text barely readable.
This is due to the fact that X-Windows does not recognize combining
characters and do not handle OpenType kerning rules. There are some
applications that can render vowels and consonants properly (yudit, for
example), but no browser yet. We're probably *still* five years away on
Linux systems... <sigh>


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





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