Late Night Tech Triumphs

[talktooloose]

I'm way behind with the book. I spent 6 hours of yesterday trying to figure out how to type Hebrew into Adobe Indesign. After browsing the net and finding some Hebrew fonts, I phoned an 800 number to confirm that they would do what I need and then biked to a Judaica shop and purchased the six megs of fontage for almost $100 with tax. I got it home and found out that they don't work. You can't type the vowels. This sounds funny to those who only know Western languages, but semitic languages have little dots, dashes and semiphore symbols all around them that act as vowels. This presents typesetting difficulties similar to those found in other multi-bit languages like Chinese.

I phoned back to the 800 number and was told that, sorry, they had been wrong, the package won't work for me. But I can buy the more expensive version and it will work. Oh, sorry, we're wrong: it won't. I put the 800 guy in touch with the NO REFUNDS store lady and they worked it out. I copied the fonts to my system anyway and returned the CD. Another software company told me they'd have a Hebrew word processor for OSX ready in a month. Too late. But they told me I should go ahead and restart in OS 9 and install the Hebrew support. I did this, though it wasn't much help. My goal was to get Hebrew text into Indesign in a post-script compatible way in OSX.

Then I found a shareware word-processor for X called Mellel which has bi-directional typing as well as an excellent "how-to" in the manual for working with Hebrew. Using the OS9 Hebrew fonts, I am now able to type in Hebrew in OSX. From then it's an, ahem, easy matter to save as PDF, open the PDF in Illustrator and then either cut and paste the text block into Indesign or else convert the text to outlines and save the Illustrator file as an eps which I can place in Indesign. Sheesh.

The Mellel site also had downloadable keyboard layouts including a QWERTY Hebrew keyboard which is faster for me to learn: the Hebrew letter that makes an "R" sound is on the "R" key. Now I'm achieving blistering speeds of 10 and 15 words a minute.

Woo (as they say) hoo.

Comments

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this will help in any way, shape or form, or if you've already tried it, BUT...

Go to your System Preferences in OS X, then hit the "International" icon. From there, hit the "Input Menu" tab. From there, you can scroll down to "Hebrew", and hit the check box. When you close that down, you should see a little US (or Canadian) flag up in your menu bar-- you can hit that to choose what non-US (or non-Canadian) character set you wanna type in. I tried it on my computer, and I can get what looks like Hebrew in, but since I know zilch about the language, I can't really tell you if the OSX implementation is any good.

I do know that since this is built in to the very core of OS X that it gets along very nicely with programs like Illustrator-- I'm able to type Japanese directly into the program and have it appear as going from left-to-right horizontally or right-to-left vertically.

It's how I got the Japanese in this image.

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found the Hebrew input tab but there don't seem to be built-in Hebrew fonts in the OS. With the fonts I bought from that manufacturer, I can type the consonants but the OS is not implemented properly for the vowels. Furthermore, bi-directional type (right to left as well as left to right) is not available at the system level in Jaguar. Rumour has it that Panther will contain it. You don't want to start copy-typing backwards. That way lies madness.

I will be able to use the OS level method for fancy titles, but may have to fake in the vowels myself.

Getting Chinese going on the computer was relatively easy because it is one of the languages loaded fully with the OS. That stuff is neat to input (I watch Snake and B'rer Rabbit). You type the pinyin (roman alphabet equivalent) and up comes a pop-up with the 25 or so characters that can be represented by that pinyin. You pick the one you want by number. Simply hitting return gives you number one, the most common character. Furthermore, based on your selection, the order is re-shifted in the pop-up, bringing the most recent to the number 1 position.

As with everything about Chinese characters, it is maddening and fascinating. Imagine a phonebook without alphabeticization and you will see why you don't want to live in China.

Thanks for the suggestions, Mark.

[epanastatis.livejournal.com]

Why do you need the vowels?

[talktooloose.livejournal.com]

Academic book for use in classrooms of prayer material. Vowelled and crosschecked! I even need unpronounced dageshes!