Macro for Hebrew right-to-left in Word

[Y2K2]

Greetings,

In acquainting myself,again, with the BW6 contents list given on BW homepage, I came across this: Macro for typing Hebrew right-to-left in Microsoft Word 6/95/97/2000.

Does this mean that there is a macro in BW6 that would enable me to type right to left in Word? Presently when I type Hebrew in Word it types "backwards". I have Dagesh 2000 Hebrew Word processor and using it I type right to left.

Thank you,
Roundtree.

[David Kummerow]

Stick with Dagesh - I hear it's a fantastic program.

The macro thing just tries to mimic real right-to-left which you get with, say, with Dagesh. But BW's move to unicode will do away with having to make use of macros with their fonts anyway.

David Kummerow.

[Y2K2]

Thank you David. I will type Hebrew in Dagesh. I am not convinced that Dagesh is a fantastic word processor, however. "It does the job" is more my description of it.

I have the idea that in the BW forum for subjects other than BW6 that it would be helpful to share experiences with bible software other than BW. It could prevent purchases of software that does not do what it is suppose to. I try to find product reviews before buying but it is not always possible. Buying "blind" can be both disappointing and expensive.

What do you think?

Roundtree.

[David Kummerow]

Yes, I think you're right - there's no real way to really prove whether a particular software product suits your purposes without trialing it yourself. In this regard, the BW trial period is a really good idea: that way if you don't like it it can always be returned and your money to you.

For much the same reasons I decided to write to the German Bible Society to see if they could supply me with a review copy of the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible software package, which they kindly did for free. The only proviso with this way of doing things is that I do have to produce a published review. (Actually, I'm currently waiting to hear back from the journal I've submitted the review regarding whether it has been accepted or not.) But while reviews are helpful, they really can't beat testing a program yourself.

Regards,
David Kummerow.

[Adelphos]

I have Dagesh 2000 Hebrew Word processor and using it I type right to left.

Have you tried Davka Writer Platinum 5.0? In my opinion, it's the best Hebrew WP around, and it comes chock-full of extras, like the Tanach in Hebrew and English, the Mishna, and so forth. You can find it at...

http://www.davka.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

When preparing documents, it is easy to paste BW into a Davka document, and you can automatically tell the program to display it in RTL or LTR format, along with many other options.

Scott
http://www.lamblion.net

[Y2K2]

David: BW's willingness to supply an interested party a boxed product for trial is most unusual. The only trial versions of software that I know of are downloads and some of them have certain features blocked out until purchase is made. For this reason I think product reviews can help, though not eliminate, regretted purchases.

Adelphos: Thank you for the information and link concerning DavkaWriter 5. I did visit their website. However, I will not invest in another Hebrew word processor. I have two now. QText and Dagesh 2000 Plus OCR. The makers of QText have ceased its development years ago now; Dagesh 2000 Plus OCR was an expensive and disappointing purchase. The OCR add-in does not compare to any of the OCR software that comes bundled with even inexpensive scanners. Sharing our experiences with software and maybe even the technical support or lack of it, is, I think, a helpful endeavour. I do not know whether this will be permitted in the "other" BW forum.

[Adelphos]

Thank you for the information and link concerning DavkaWriter 5. I did visit their website. However, I will not invest in another Hebrew word processor. I have two now. QText and Dagesh 2000 Plus OCR.

Davka concentrates specifically on Hebrew and is simply head and shoulders above the others, in my opion.

Thus, for others reading this post who might be interested, Davka is offering, according to their website, an upgrade to Davka Platinum 5.0 for a mere $70.00 US to owners of Dagesh and QText.

This is a price that I doubt will be beaten. If one is going to do serious Hebrew WP work, then there is nothing out there that I'm aware of that even comes close to Davka.

And I have found it to work seamlessly with BW with regard to pasting text and manupilating that text.

I do wish that someone who is familiar with Davka would write a little macro that would convert the BW font to one of the Davka fonts, like Davka David, or Vilna, etc.

Scott
http://www.lamblion.net

[MGVH]

I haven't had as much reason to use Hebrew lately, but it is doable in WinXP with Unicode using Tavultesoft Keyman (http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/ )
When I was using Hebrew more frequently NotaBene (Lingua) was a very fine word processor that handles just about anything. http://www.notabene.com/

[Adelphos]

When I was using Hebrew more frequently NotaBene (Lingua) was a very fine word processor that handles just about anything. http://www.notabene.com/

I've looked at the website of NotaBene several times, and I still can't figure out exactly what it's made for. What is your overall assessment of it? What would you recommend it for, i.e., what would you consider to be its best functional use? It looks like a very nice program, but thus far I can't figure out what I would use it for.

Scott
http://www.lamblion.net

[Leabeater]

Along the same lines...

I have a table with two columns in Word. I want to display English in the left cells and Hebrew in the right cells. Problem: when I run the macro and attempt to paste from BibleWork's BHS (e.g. Daniel 9:21) into the right cell the Hebrew text is improperly formatted.

I tried a number of variations of cut and paste. None seemed to work.

Is there a problem with the macro and Word tables or am I doing something wrong?