[texhax] Hebrew fonts with XeLaTeX

[Moshe Kamensky]

* Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon at gmail.com> [27/02/11 12:24]:
> On 02/27/2011 09:30 AM, Moshe Kamensky wrote:
> > I am trying write a document in Hebrew, using XeLaTeX. Things mostly 
> > seem to work, except for some issues which, I think, are related to 
> > fonts.
> > 
> > I tried using either the Cardo or the Ezra SIL fonts, both of which I 
> > found recommended in various place on the web. The main problem is that 
> > I cannot get bold and italic text to work. In fact, it seems that the 
> > whole text is in bold. Commands like \emph and \textbf seem to have no 
> > effect. In the log file I see:
> <snip>
> > Which seems to suggest that these variants don't exist. So my questions 
> > here are, whether they really don't exist, or should I use some 
> > different commands? And if they don't exist, is there some other Hebrew 
> > font where they do exist? Is there a way to "produce" bold and italic 
> > variants? Also, is there a way to make the normal text less bold? As it 
> > is, it is very hard to visually spot the theorems, proofs, etc.
> 
> Cardo and Ezra (as well as SBL Hebrew) are aimed at the scholarly
> market:  They have support for niqqud and te‘amim and other details
> needed for printing the Tanach.  But, as you noted, they don’t have bold
> or italic variants used for runs of modern-style text.
> 
> Automatically producing bold or italic is possible, but produces ugly
> results; similarly trying to reduce the weight of a font.
> 
> Your best bet is in finding a different font to use.
> 

Thanks. I have now found some fonts that include italic and bold support 
in Hebrew. They are:

Linux Libertine from http://linuxlibertine.sourceforge.net/

FreeSans and FreeSerif from 
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/freefont/

DejaVuSans from http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/

Thank you,
Moshe