[XeTeX] Ancient Hebrew font problem

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Ron Aaron wrote:

> Just to complete what others have said, I use raw 'xetex' and have a font line like:
>
> \def\hfont{SBL Hebrew:script=hebr,language=IWR,mapping=tex-text}

This really confuses me, Ron : if this were TeX and not XeTeX,
I would be confident that the line above simply defined a
macro "\hfont" to expand to the string "SBL Hebrew:script=hebr,
language=IWR,mapping=tex-text".  Does XeTeX handle this differently,
and if so, what sort of beast does \hfont become ?

** Phil.