[XeTeX] Using hebrew

[Jonathan Kew]

On 7 Mar 2007, at 6:09 am, Yaniv Hollander wrote:

> Here it is...
>
> <Test_Hebrew.log>
>

OK, there are a couple of things I notice here:

> This is XeTeX, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.995 (Web2C 7.5.5)

This is not the most recent release of XeTeX; all the current TeX  
Live-based packages include version 0.996. However, this is not the  
main problem; it should still work.

> entering extended mode
> (./Test_Hebrew.tex
> LaTeX2e <2005/12/01>
> Babel <v3.8d> and hyphenation patterns for american, french,  
> german, ngerman, b
> ahasa, basque, bulgarian, catalan, croatian, czech, danish, dutch,  
> esperanto, e
> stonian, finnish, greek, icelandic, irish, italian, latin, magyar,  
> norsk, polis
> h, portuges, romanian, russian, serbian, slovak, slovene, spanish,  
> swedish, tur
> kish, ukrainian, nohyphenation, loaded.
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/base/article.cls
> Document Class: article 2005/09/16 v1.4f Standard LaTeX document class
> (/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/base/size12.clo))

Likewise, the pathnames here show that you are running an older teTeX- 
based installation. It could be that you have installed a new MacTeX  
or gwTeX recently, but TeXShop is still configured to use an older  
version. But this still shouldn't prevent things working....

> ! Font \zf at basefont="SBL Hebrew/ICU" at 12.0pt not loadable: Metric  
> (TFM) file
> or installed font not found.
> \zf at preparse@Script ...\zf at suffix " at \f at size pt
>                                                   \edef  
> \zf at family@long {\zf...
> l.11 \setromanfont[Script=Hebrew]{SBL Hebrew}

Here's the basic problem: the sample I sent was set up to use the SBL  
Hebrew font. But you don't have this font installed, and therefore  
you're getting the "font not found" error.

So to solve this, you can get the SBL Hebrew font from the SBL web  
site (see http://www.sbl-site.org/Resources/ as mentioned in a  
comment in the source I sent), and install it in your Library/Fonts  
folder. Or as you're running on Mac OS X, you can use one of Apple's  
fonts that supports Hebrew. E.g., change the font name from {SBL  
Hebrew} to {Lucida Grande}.

JK