Creating OT-Hebrew Documents?

[Yaku Lee]

Using Korean edition of MS Word of MS Office Professional Edition 2003, I installed “Other Language Support” (Control Panel, Country & Language Option, Language tab) on MS Windoes XP. I have Bwhebb.ttf installed. Choosing “Hebrew Input Device” on MS Word and clicking “Right to Left” icon, it looks OK except that the keyboard doesn’t behave properly. Eg., for “a” you don’t get a but X, and for “~” not ~ but “~,” etc. With the shift key depressed, it behaves partially OK. Moreover I cannot designate Bwhebb on the font box. How can I fix it so that I can create “normal” OT-Hebrew documents?

[David Kummerow]

BW fonts are not unicode fonts so are unsuitable for what you are trying to do, ie using the language support etc. of the OS and Office.

Install the SIL Hebrew keyboard driver and for fonts use either SBL Hebrew or Ezra SIL.

Regards,
David Kummerow.

[Yaku Lee]

It surely sounds very odd that I should raise a question and I should answer the same sometime later, but that is what really happened. And I am posting this answer hoping to help some other agonizing souls like myself.
I explored every possibility I could get my hands on with no avail, and I accidentally looked at the gray area on the BW User Forums and found “BibleWorks Customer Support FAQs.” Perhaps there is my answer?
Voila! Yes. Go to “Fonts and Keyboard Issues” in the section “Troubleshooting,” and find the article “How Can I Key Hebrew Text into BibleWorks or a Word Processor?” by Charlie, a BibleWorks Staff. Follow the instruction and your headache is gone.
However there seems to be some minor glitches to be resolved. (1) Normal editing mark for space is a shaded dot in the middle, but it appears as a square here. Hide the editing mark, and the squares disappear. (2) Final Kafs have some problems. The little Sheva and Kamets do not hang up there as the Chireck does, and they fall down to the bottom. (3) Cholem does not get attached to a consonant but takes a character space of its own. (4) For no apparent reason the keyboard suddenly behaves erratically, and just as suddenly it goes back to normal. I couldn’t figure out why.
I submitted these problems to the BW customer service division and they promised to attend to them in the near future. I hope they will take care of them very soon.
Yaku Lee

[David Kummerow]

Most of the issues you list above sound to me like issues with the particular font you are using. For example, the holem spacing issue I know happens with Times New Roman but that has now been repaired with the version shipped with Vista I've heard. Using BL Hebrew or Ezra SIL there are no such issues.

Regards,
David.

[MGVH]

The Unicode Hebrew KEYBOARDS are not created equal. It is a known problem when typing Greek in the editor window.
The one keyboard system that does seem to work is the one from Tavultesoft, Keyman. I can't speak for sure about Hebrew, but you can try the program for free before buying for $19. I have more info here.

[David Kummerow]

Isn't Keyman for non-unicode fonts? In terms of Greek, I've modified the Tyndale keyboard driver and for Hebrew I've slightly modified the SBL one. For transliteration, I've done one from scratch.

Regards,
David.

[Yaku Lee]

I have had no problem at all with Greek either in BW editor or in MS Word, mostly in MS Word. With the Bwgrkl.ttf and Bwgrkn.ttf fonts (from BW) installed just like any other fonts on my Windows XP, by simply selecting one of the fonts on the font box (either with Korean or English (US) keyboard) I could enter any Greek word with accents, of course, just as easily as any English word. I could easily switch back and forth between Greek and English by selecting the appropriate font on the font box. And I have never bothered about Unicode system until I came to Hebrew.
Kindly,
Yaku Lee

[David Kummerow]

Bwgrkl is a non-unicode font so Word will not recognise it as Greek language input so spell-checking will thing it is English (or whatever your default language). However, because Greek is a left-to-write language, it can be input as if it were "English". Hebrew you have more difficulties with unless you go with unicode. One of the things I used to hate when using non-unicode Hebrew fonts was the wrong word wrapping down when adjust margins or changing a line. I can post my keyboard drivers if anyone would like to test, both for 32 bit and 64 bit systems.

Regards,
David.

[MGVH]

Hello, David,
I had blogged HERE and HERE regarding Greek Unicode keyboard drivers. As you comment, I did find that the Tyndale ones worked well, but I hate having to type accents/breathing before typing the vowel. The Logos one is much nicer in this respect, but it has all sorts of issues in Word2007.

I would be interested in hearing/seeing what you did to modify the Tyndale keyboards for Greek and SBL for Hebrew.

(BTW, Keyman works great for Unicode Greek/Hebrew, but as I mentioned, it costs $19 for just two additional keyboards.)

Thanks.
mark

[David Kummerow]

(BTW, Keyman works great for Unicode Greek/Hebrew, but as I mentioned, it costs $19 for just two additional keyboards.)

Thanks for the info, that's news to me.

Microsoft's MSKLC isn't too difficult to use to make adjustments to a keyboard driver. There's only one or two things I added to SIL's Hebrew keyboard driver. Now that I think about it, I may not have made any alterations to Tydale's Greek keyboard driver, just compiled it for use with 32 bit and 64 bit systems. It wouldn't be too hard to change to allow for accents/breathing after their letter.

Tomorrow I provide some links.

Regards,
David.