[texhax] Fwd: Typesetting in Hebrew

[Moshe Kamensky]

Hi,

There are two different questions here: editing the document, and
compiling.

For compiling, I have the following in the preamble:

\usepackage{xunicode}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
%\setdefaultlanguage[numerals=hebrew]{hebrew}
\setdefaultlanguage{hebrew}
\setotherlanguage{english}
\setmainfont[Script=Hebrew,Ligatures=TeX]{Linux Libertine}

I then compile with xelatex. Works well.

Editing is more complicated, and depends on your environment and taste,
but basically you need bidi support. What I use is vim within
rxvt-unicode, with a perl plugin for rxvt-unicode that makes it bidi
aware. You could, of course, use another bidi aware term, or a bidi
aware editor.

I also find it convenient to translate the commands into Hebrew, so that
there is no need to switch languages to enter a command. E.g.,

\let\תווית=\label
\let\סעיף=\section

and so on.

Best,
Moshe

* D.Edmons <dedmons at comcast.net> [19/11/13 17:36]:
> Hi,
>
> Though I still use (La)TeX for some simple English documents, I left off
> using it several years ago due to it being quite unable to support
> Hebrew (without doing backflips, cartwheels, and painful contortions).
> Now, with utf8 evolving as the new text standard, I'm hoping things are,
> or will be different.
>
> Already I've been able to view some very simple Hebrew using XeTeX and
> the TeXworks "editor".  However, the result is quite awful.  In terms of
> display, if I input the following text:
>       This is a simple English sentence.
> and it were displayed as:
>       English .sentence simple a is This
> the average user would be outraged, but this on my first simple test, is
> almost exactly what I get: gibberish.
>
> Are there any actual Hebrew users here?  I couldn't find an IL or He
> user group.
>
> I know there's a plethora of attempts to solve this, but what is the
> current state of affairs, and where do I go for the most authoritative
> information?  XeTeX and TeXworks seems to be a good starting place if
> they are able to fix their very broken Hebrew support.
>
> Feed back would be most welcome!  (I'm working on two projects: writing
> a prayer book with combined English and Hebrew.  Formatting the text of
> the Tanach/Torah.  Accuracy is very much required!)
>
>
> Thank you and Shalom.
>
> Dale Edmons
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