Are any Jewish commentators (Rashi, Ibn Ezra) available?

[Adelphos]

Well, I just did a short exploration, but from what I can tell, Davka's translator will certainly meet most people's needs, and it's a lot faster than the net, and you don't have to type anything or copy and paste anything.

In fact, all you have to do is highlight a word and then click on the translate button and viola! And Davka gives a whole range of defintions and options for each word.

[SCSaunders]

Well, yes, it does cost money, but it's really pretty cheap, and once you get used to simply hitting alt+/ to type Hebrew smack in the middle of an English sentence, and have everything line up perfectly and automatically, and then hit alt+/ again to switch back to English, and then again to Hebrew, plus so many other features, it sure beats dorking around with MS Word in trying to get just one sentence right, which you can hardly ever do anyway.

I've read this entire thread to date, many posts over the evening it seems. I'm definitely starting to feel a compulsion to add Davka to my software repertoire. Plus, God will tell you, I hate "dorking around with MS Word," I honestly hate it. That's no lie. I can be a dork at times; but that's a personal choice I make. When Bill Gates applications force me to dork ..... Ooooooh! That starts one of my sphincters a'puckerin'!

[MGVH]

Nota Bene still is the best for handling Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, etc. It even takes care of final forms (both Hebrew and sigma in Greek) automatically. I don't, however, particularly like its system of dealing w/ accents and vowels, but it is usable.
The best option in Word is using Tavultesoft Keyman. US$19 gets you two keyboards.

[ISalzman]

Nota Bene still is the best for handling Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, etc. It even takes care of final forms (both Hebrew and sigma in Greek) automatically. I don't, however, particularly like its system of dealing w/ accents and vowels, but it is usable.
The best option in Word is using Tavultesoft Keyman. US$19 gets you two keyboards.

If you'll allow me the liberty of asking, with what synod is the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg affiliated (Missouri, Wisconsin, etc.)?

[Adelphos]

Nota Bene still is the best for handling Roman, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, etc. It even takes care of final forms (both Hebrew and sigma in Greek) automatically. I don't, however, particularly like its system of dealing w/ accents and vowels, but it is usable.
The best option in Word is using Tavultesoft Keyman. US$19 gets you two keyboards.

Does Nota Bene auto-format, say, Hebrew in the middle of an English sentence, or vice versa? That is, can I just type along in English, hit a toggle key, then type Hebrew, have it auto-formated in right-to-left, then hit the toggle key again and go back to English?

[ISalzman]

DavkaWriter handles the Hebrew accents and vowels perfectly. It is, keep in mind, a Hebrew word processor first and foremost. Nothing handles Hebrew better. Although, there is one other Hebrew word processor on the market from Israel called 'Dagesh.' I used it years ago and it was quite good too. But that was a number of years and computers ago. I know they still make the product, but I haven't used it anytime recently. So I couldn't assess its strengths and weaknesses as compared to DavkaWriter.

[MGVH]

The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg is ELCA.

[MGVH]

Yes, Nota Bene (NB) does everything on the fly. CTRL-SHFT G to switch to Greek, CTRL-SHFT H to Hebrew, CTRL-SHFT R back to Roman. Left/right is handled perfectly. The one thing you have to get used to is hitting F6 to access all the vowels/accents, and then hit the character to get what you want.
Do check out the NB Lingua page. In addition to Roman, Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, it also supports Syriac, Akkadian, Ugaritic, Coptic, Arabic, etc. NB is also a great company run by fine people.
Getting NB Lingua will cost at least $300, but that also includes their excellent bibliographical and textbase modules.
I will acknowledge that I've mostly switched to MSWord for most of my daily stuff and have been using Zotero now to accumulate bibliographical info, but for a heavy duty project with lots of language and footnoting and adherence to style manual conventions, NB is better. NB's native format is RTF, and they do import/export to DOC.

[ISalzman]

The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg is ELCA.

Thanks. Nice area around Gettysburg, Chambersberg, Shippenville, etc. How far would you guys be from the Hagerstown, MD area?

[Adelphos]

Yes, Nota Bene (NB) does everything on the fly. CTRL-SHFT G to switch to Greek, CTRL-SHFT H to Hebrew, CTRL-SHFT R back to Roman. Left/right is handled perfectly. The one thing you have to get used to is hitting F6 to access all the vowels/accents, and then hit the character to get what you want.

It does appear that NB is the best all-around tool. If I actually needed it, I'd cough up the bucks for it, but I don't need it.

I do need the Hebrew, and as Irving said, I think Davka is unequaled for strictly Hebrew, but that's what they specialize in.

I would think that anybody who is doing serious work with languages which they needed to publish, such as for a Ph.D., or for peer journals, would find NB indispensable.