Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Christopher V. Kimball" <transcriber AT tanach.us>]

Dear Martin,

Robert Holmstedt's previous mail to the group helped us to get the site 
running on Mac OS 10.4 ... at least partially.  He's using the Cardo 
Hebrew font available at:

http://scholarsfonts.net/cardofnt.html .

He sets the fonts for the Hebrew language to Cardo.

"Preferences --> Content --> Advanced (under Fonts and Colors) --> 
choose "For Hebrew" and then select whatever font you want for each 
category. "  (Robert Holmstadt)

This produced some confusion in accents on the FontTest page but yields 
very good text in the Vowels content mode.  The site outputs Unicode 4.1 
which probably wasn't available when the Cardo font was completed.  The 
Cardo font yields better text than the SBL Hebrew font on the Mac this way.

> 1. Create a very simply XML and XSLT page which only sets the font  
> and displays some Hebrew (if it's simply I'll probably be able to  
> muddle through it!), and/or

Great idea!  Please see

http://www.tanach.us/Fonts/FontTest.html

for a very simple HTML file that is easily edited to change fonts.

> 2. Tell me where to look to see the JavaScript/XSLT which sets the  
> Hebrew font?

The font is set in the XSL files (files in the XSL directory ending in 
.xsl.xml ).  An XSL variable called "fontfamily" (no hyphen) sets the 
font throughout each file:  Look for

<!-- Variable fontfamily gives the family name of the Hebrew 
fonts.         -->
<xsl:variable name="fontfamily" >SBL Hebrew</xsl:variable>

near the start of each file and change SBL Hebrew to whatever you'd 
like.  At the minimum, you'll need to change the Tanach.xsl.xml, 
Pages.xsl.xml, and Text.xsl.xml files. ( Be sure to keep a backup 
because the smallest error will produce confusing error messages.)

Your feedback is much appreciated.  Please let me know of your problems 
and results.

Chris Kimball
Redding, CT