Inessential Hebrew for Athena.

Section 1: Netscape.

To read Hebrew in Netscape, click on Options, and set document encoding to Used-Defined. Then click on Options again, and select the general preferences. Go to fonts, and again set encoding to User Defined.. Now you will have a range of options for the fixed and proportional fonts. Anything that is ISO-8859-8 is Hebrew. Note: If you don't know what the Rashi font is, then don't choose it. It doesn't look like any other font, and it dates back to a printer way back when who wanted his books (written by Rashi) to distinguish text from gloss.

Bugs: There's one very annoying bug: if you go back to a page the document encoding reverts to Latin, so all you have is a bunch of accented vowels. All is not lost, though: go to the url, and add the characters "./" after a slash. That fools Netscape into thinking this is a new page. If you've done this enough times to make the URL look funky, you can flush your caches and start anew that way. Also, bookmarking is your friend.

Section 2: Writing in Hebrew on Athena.

Step 1:

Log into a Sun, and type:

add babel
mule&

This program is an elaboration on emacs. Now:

   meta-x load-library
   quail/hebrew
   control-]

You are now in Hebrew mode. To know what button on your keyboard does what, press meta-z. That gives you a chart. Your travails are not over yet, though. To get mule to go right-to-left, you must press: meta-x toggle-display-direction. Now you're in business. Mule saves with the same commands as emacs.

Step 2:

Well, not quite in business. The file you save will have a few quirks that Netscape won't like. Now you must use the Hebrifier Perl script:

add ocschwar
hebrifier file-you-just-saved name-you-want-to-give-the-final-output

Note: Hebrifier is in beta-test mode. To get the full lowdown on it do hebrifier -help. This gives you something you can more and you can paste into a text or HTML file and get something. In HTML, it is best to put the text in the following tag:

 <div align=right><pre>...text...</pre></div>

You may have a different opinion, but you can play around to see what you like.

Section 3: FrameMaker.

First thing, you load up a font. You can find these in /mit/yonah/Sipb/fonts.

What to do with them: Coming soon.

Section 4: Latex.

First, visit this site in Israel for a better explanation.
Then, you can add newtex and run texxet, latexxet, or latexxet209. To make this work, you also need to run these things:

setenv TEXINPUTS /afs/sipb/project/XeT/hebrew_stuff:$TEXINPUTS
setenv TEXFONTS /afs/sipb/project/XeT/fonts/tfm:$TEXFONTS
setenv TEXPKS /afs/sipb/project/XeT/fonts/pk:$TEXPKS

If you want me to add anything based on your interaction with Xet, please email me.

Section 5: Forget all this... Where can I get nice graphic files?

Right now I have a full set of printed and handwritten gifs in my locker.

add ocschwar
cd /mit/ocschwar/www/hebrew

If the selection isn't up to snuff, you can 1. use graphic editors and the individual letters in the directory, or 2. go to this site in Israel. Before you do that, expand your window and enable Javascript. Once you have a phrase written, run XV, grab the Netscape window, crop around the phrase, and you are in business!

Author: Omri Schwarz, with help from Yonah Schmeidler.