[XeTeX] Using hebrew

[François Charette]

Dear Yaniv,
> On 6 Mar 2007, at 1:52 pm, Yaniv Hollander wrote:
>   
>> Does anyone knows what is the best method to create Hebrew  
>> documents with Latex/XeLatex?
>>     
> Handling right-to-left layout properly for all the various LaTeX  
> environments, document classes, etc., will require some additional  
> work; the simple
> \everypar setting here is just for normal paragraphs of text. Perhaps  
> some of the experienced R-L script users on the list can offer more  
> extensive examples of working with Hebrew, Arabic, and similar scripts.
>
> JK
>   
You may try out my LaTeX package bidi.sty (attached), which mostly 
borrows code from rlbabel.def and adds a fews bells and whistles. It is 
part of my arabxetex package, which I intend to upload to CTAN very soon 
(I should have done it two months ago but work overload prevented it ;-)

bidi takes a generic approach to bidirectional typesetting and is 
targeted at XeLaTeX users.

It defines the following macros:
* \LR{...} and \RL{...} (for short insertions)
* \setRL and \setLR (= \unsetRL) to switch paragraph direction globally.
* \setfootnoteRL and \setfootnoteLR  (= \unsetfootnoteRL) to have 
direction of plain footnotes other than the main paragraph direction.

There are also macros for writing alphabetic numerals in Arabic (Eastern 
and Western abjad) and Hebrew (rather primitive implementation for now):
* \abjad{...}
* \abjadmaghribi{...}
* and \hebrewnumeral{...}.

NB: I'll post a notice when arabxetex is on CTAN. It shouldn't take too 
long :-)

And, as I think about it, I shall actually upload bidi as a separate 
package instead of leaving it as an ancillary to arabxetex.

Best wishes,

François

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