On Fri, 17 May 2002, Tzafrir Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hebrew fonts:
> """"""""""""
> Generally avaialble anywhere:
But the xterms must be specifically configured. For example, because
my window manager is hard-wired to start an "xterm 80x25" on left-button
click, this means I'll have to reconfigure it. Pain.
> on basically any X distibution you can run:
>
> xterm -fn heb8x13
Which Debian package should I install for that?
Pain.
> In the linux console: the kbd distribution (avvailable from the near-by
> kernel mirror, and part of basically any distro, in one way or another)
> includes console ISO-8859-8 ("iso08") fonts that you can use. You can
> configure them at startup. I don't remember the exact settings needed at
> the moemnt. Probably soemthing like:
>
> consolechars -f iso08.f16 -m iso08
..if you don't use svgatextmode, and if your terminal is 80x25.
Pain.
> In a windows/Mac system: Here you need to rely on the support of your
> system and terminal emulation. In all the terminal emulations I
> encountered this wasn't that difficult, unless the system really has no
> Hebrew fonts installed. In this case there are other sources for fonts,
> e.g: MS-typography mentioned above, as well as Snunit's "web fonts".
..what if you're on a publically accessible system, like a web-cafe?
Pain.
> Hebrew keyboard support:
> """""""""""""""""""""""
> On Windows/Mac terminal emulations you can use the system's Hebrew support
> (is there any issue with Mac Hebrew?)
>
> In the linux console you should use the keymap "il-8859_8" (not sure about
> the name, this is the name from Mandrake 8.1, I an still see there a
> bogus "hebrew" keymap.)
..and all you need to do it is search the HOWTOs and FAQs about how to do
it, and which is the correct one.
Pain.
> In X: Invery old X servers you don't have the Xkb extentions and you have
> to revert to using xmodmap (or kde1's kikbd, which I find useful
> sometimes, on Solaris 8). There is also the issue of "8bit" keymaps vs.
> correct keymapping:
>
> http://www.iglu.org.il/faq/cache/85.html
>
> In short: there are some small technical difficulties, and this is a
> subject for a different post. This post is long enough. But nothing that
> is not easily solvable, unless you need to write in Both Hebrew and
> another Language (say Arabic, or Russian) and in a "legacy" application
> (legacy: not unicode-based - not gtk2, qt>=2, mozilla, openoffice?)
>
>
> Bidirectional Hebrew:
> """"""""""""""""""""
> I find that for reading Hebrew mail it is enough to have a terminal
> emulation with reasonable bidi support.
..unless you happen to work from the Linux console terminal emulator.
Pain.
> Such available terminals:
>
> * a terminal emulation on a windows/Mac system with bidi support
> (actually, sometimes you need to set the font to "web hebrwe" to avoid the
> bidi support). Note that putty does have an annoying refreshing bug, as
> Orna previously mentioned.
>
> This is not enough for composing messages (except relatively shrt ones),
> though, because editing Hebrew text in a bidi terminal is not nice. For
> that oyu need an editor that follows the cursor (even though I encountered
> one exception to this).
>
> on X you have the following terminals with bidi support:
>
> mlterm (MultiLingual TERMinal)
>
> http://mlterm.sf.net
>
> (apt-get install mlterm on debian woody/sid)
> I must admit that I have not yet been able to get bidi from it.
>
> There is an unmailtained and probably buggy patch to the standard xterm to
> add bidi support along with some other features.
Obviously, nobody cares enough to maintain it, and to push it into the
distros version of xterm. Instead, it seems better to write long, whiny,
posts.
> Composing:
> """""""""
> You can write logical Hebrew in $EDITOR . Any decent edtor should accept
> Hebrew character. But composing without being able to properly read what
> you write is a problem.
>
> I normally switch to vim whenever I need to write something that is
> non-trivial in Hebrew. Note that vim has a problem with parens: the Hebrew
> support reverses them.
In other word, there exactly two editors with proper Hebrew support.
> Conclusion:
> """"""""""
>
> Except in composing, with some configuration work you can probably
> configure your environment to read Hebrew in a text-mode mail client.
..if you have a free week for all the tweaks and beta tests
And this is somehow supposed to justify sending hebrew e-mail to this
mailing list? Or, for a bigger laugh, to gnubies-il?
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