Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

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/