On 17 May 2002, Moshe Zadka wrote:
> 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.
xterm supports configuration through X resources.
xterm on my system uses a Hebrew font without the switch -fn .
IIRC you need to put:
XTerm*Font: "heb8x13"
(or whatever) in your .Xresources.
Alternati vely you can configure the "Tiny" font to be a Hebrew font
instead:
XTerm**VT100*font2: "heb8x13"
>
> > on basically any X distibution you can run:
> >
> > xterm -fn heb8x13
>
> Which Debian package should I install for that?
> Pain.
>
Actually, you're right. In various versions of debian the alias 'heb8x13'
is bogus. I believe I posted to debian-il about this (with a workaround?)
Is this still the case? In this case a bug report is urgently needed
Anyway, you have a Hebrew font there, etl-something. Use xfontsel and look
for iso8859-8 fonts. There are probably more details in that debain-il
post I mentioned.
>
> > 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.
There are also .f14 and .f08
As for as for svgatextmode: I don't know this beast. Anybody?
Anybody uses it?
>
> > 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.
you mean mindterm (what other terminal can I use on a *web*-cafe?)
That's a problem. But then you're not able to read other Hebrew sites and
read other Hebrew mail as well, so you care less about linux-il ;-)
>
> > 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.
Depends where. On a Mandrake system all you need to do is to choose
"Israel" (or is it "Hebrew"?) in the beginning of the installation.
>
> > 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.
Read about Akka below.
>
> > 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.
Those effots focus now in mlterm)
>
>
> > 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
A week? it only takes me one hour. ;-)
>
> And this is somehow supposed to justify sending hebrew e-mail to this
> mailing list? Or, for a bigger laugh, to gnubies-il?
No Hebrew support in PythonMS in the forseeable future, right?
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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