Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 07/08/2006 23:11, Christopher V. Kimball wrote:
> MS Word 2002 (10.6804.6804) SP3 and Open Office 2.0 seem to work fine on 
> Windows 2000 system.  Both accept cuts and pastes from the Unicode/XML 
> Tanach without problem.  Getting the correct keyboard may be a problem.  
> With an Israeli keyboard and the appropriate Windows Language module, 
> you can switch between English and Hebrew very easily.  Finding the key 
> combinations for vowels may be a problem, but they're there. 
> Cantillation marks are not available that I know of. .
>
>   
Windows 2000 and XP offer full support for right to left languages 
including Hebrew - but the support does need to be installed from 
Control Panel - Regional and Language Options - Languages (these 
instructions for XP).

Word in Microsoft Office 2000 and later provides full Hebrew word 
processing capabilities on Windows 2000 and XP with right to left 
language support enabled. Again, this support does need to be explicitly 
enabled, via Start - All Programs - Microsoft Office - Microsoft Office 
Tools - Microsoft Office Language Settings.

This support includes (very nearly) all Hebrew required for the Hebrew 
Bible, including cantillation marks, in Windows XP with the latest 
service pack installed, if an appropriate font is selected. Cantillation 
marks may be misplaced in older versions of Windows. As appropriate 
fonts I can recommend as free downloads Ezra SIL, from 
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=EzraSIL_Home, 
and SBL Hebrew from http://www.sbl-site.org/Resources/default.aspx. Both 
of these come as packages which include useful keyboarding utilities, 
based on transliteration. It is also possible to use the Microsoft 
supplied Israeli keyboard driver, but this is hard to use without a 
physical keyboard, and its support for vowel points is inconvenient and 
for cantillation marks non-existent.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/