[texhax] Typesetting in Hebrew

[D.Edmons]

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