Re: Hebrew in LaTeX

On Fri, Dec 16, 2005, Ron Artstein wrote about "Re: Hebrew in LaTeX":
> On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> > > The only problem I see with making Culmus the default under babel 
> > > is one of distribution -- babel should ship with the actual fonts 
> > > themselves, as it does, for instance, with Greek (and Hebrew, for 
> > > that matter).
> > 
> > Are you sure that Babel indeed comes with such extra fonts? I don't
> > see them on my system.
> 
> You don't have $TEXMF/fonts/source/public/cbgreek/ ?

Yes, it does (/usr/share/texmf/fonts/source/public/cbgreek, actually),
but I was talking about the Hebrew fonts. It doesn't look like the old
Hebrew fonts (jerus10 and friends) came on my system, but the Babel I
got does assume them (so if you use Hebrew, you get missing fonts error).
I suggested that if this was the case, Babel could just as well depend
on Culmus (which also doesn't come with it).

> I'm sorry, but I disagree. Using fonts -- any fonts -- is a pain 
> with TeX. For the Culmus support, for instance, you need to not 
> only create .tfm files, but also .vf files that map the 8-bit TeX 
> encoding to the unicode positions in the fonts themselves, map 
> files that tell printer drivers where to find these fonts, and 
> probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting at the moment. All of 
> this must be done through TeX-specific tools rather than standard 
> system tools.

So far it doesn't preclude the .tfm, .vf, and so on from coming with
Babel but the fonts themselves not. But,

> If you update your fonts, it has to be done again. 

I forgot this. This is indeed a problem :(
But not a big problem. This means that a third package, "hebrew-fonts-tfm"
(for example), should be provided by the distribution (and it is specific
to a certain version of tex and culmus). Or, the distribution's "hebrew-fonts"
package might include both Culmus and the .tfms and .vfs for tex (the
distribution knows where it puts TeX).

> Given that Culmus is still under active development, there normally 
> would be a lag between updating Culmus and updating the TeX 
> resources. You don't want to hold up your entire system waiting for 
> TeX to catch up.

Which is exactly why I don't want Babel to contain Culmus (or its tfms,
etc.), and I want a separate package to provide this. But I do want the
out-of-the-box babel to assume that you have the proper culmus support,
rather than assuming (as it currently does), that you have the jerus10
fonts - which people don't have anyway.

> Give me a week or so to sort things out on my laptop -- I haven't 
> checked the inventory in quite a while :-)

Thanks.

Nadav.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Friday, Dec 16 2005, 15 Kislev 5766
nyh-TS7m/[email protected]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A diplomat thinks twice before saying
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |nothing.
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