Re: Hebrew in LaTeX

Nadav Har'El wrote:
> So I would like to start using LaTeX 2e for doing Hebrew typesetting, and
> if I find bugs in that support, I would like to work on fixing them.
> 
> But the problem is, that I don't know where to start, and where to contribute
> any fixes I might have. So I'm looking for advice.

As you saw there is the not-really-functioning ivritex project, I
started it up with the sources of heblatex and Tzafrir did most of the
work to maintain it.

It worked last time I needed it but that was a long ago which is why I
didn't do anything with it, and I guess Tzafrir is in a similar state.
So you are more than welcome taking over it, I can give you admin rights
on the sourceforge project if you just tell me you id there.

> I saw that in Babel there is already some sort of Hebrew support, and I
> saw that there's a separate project http://ivritex.sourceforge.net/.
> What's the difference between those? Why weren't the "ivritex" changes
> integrated back into the main Babel? Or were they? And how come "our"
> version (ivritex) is two years old, while the Babel version is listed as
> having a 2005 copyright?
> (ftp://tug.ctan.org/pub/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/babel/hebrew.dtx)

No-one did any work on this from the ivritex side and I never tracked
the babel work to see what they did, it would be a good idea to start
with figuring out what are the differences, if any. Tzafrir might know
more about this as he is the one who really did the work.

This is from an e-mail exchange with him:
------
On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 03:57:44PM +0100, Baruch Even wrote:

>> On Wed, 2004-10-06 at 15:47, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
>
>>> > (FWIW, recent Babel should now contain the latest changes from
ivritex)
>
>>
>> Does that mean that the latest babel makes ivritex obsolete?


The babel part, yes. So the ugly overrides can be removed.

Not the fonts parts.

The hebclass part is probably a nice-to-have
------

> Another thing I'm curious about (before taking the plunge and actually
> starting to use and/or fix the existing work) is which fonts are used.

The old fonts were crap and at the time I needed it I used the ms fonts,
there were instructions on *your* website on how to do this which I
followed, it was a pain.

Tzafrir said to me in another e-mail exchange he has an hack to make
Culmus work with ivritex. Hopefully he still has it somewhere and you
can improve on that. Another e-mail from him says he put it in
ftp://iglu.org.il/pub/Hebrew/HebLatex/ called ivritex 1.2 and there is
also another announcement for
ftp://iglu.org.il/pub/Hebrew/HebLatex/Contrib/Culmus this was in a
message to the IVRITEX mailing list with Message-ID
<[email protected]>

There was also another project that forked off the ivritex stuff (or
some other base) and added support for fonts and vowel points. It would
be a good idea to integrate it as well, http://nikud.berlios.de/

> So I'd be grateful for any pointers or suggestions, before I take the
> plunge.

Hope this helps,
Baruch
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