Re: Hebrew; and the left to right/right to left problem

On 6/6/05, hermanmeester <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> In order to be able to type Hebrew, they taught me (on http://iglu.org.il/) how to make holding down two shifts (permanent, I mean until closing down the computer) or the right alt key (temporarily, you have to keep holding it down) the key to switch to typing Hebrew in just about any application. I mainly needed it badly for browsers to search on words (I use Suse9.1).
> 
> The command goes
> 
> setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll us,il
> 
> 
> It's perfect, because the right-to-left alfabets were always annoying (to me that is) for computers, if you don't live in a country whre it's the default. Now that's just one switch. I remember having to mess with "insert -special characters" and then giving them fastkeys; but still you'd have to type backwards. You learn a lot then, turning aroung words in your brain all the time, but it's like typing
> 
> "nelots neeb sah ekib ym ,yadretseY"
> 
> To be sure, that's English, not Belarussian or something.
> 
> Both an advantage and a disadvantage is that you have to give that command every time anew after booting (only problematic for people who ever turn off their computer, like me ;-))
> 
> I don't know yet how to make Hebrew the default; maybe I don't want that yet. But anyway, could any of you enlighten my ignorance: what is basically the difference between such a command like the one above, and using YaST or such to configure the system for Hebrew (or Arabic or so)? I made Hebrew a secondary language in YaST, but I dont really see the difference, I mean all the read-only characters show well, that's what I need;
> 
> Anyway I like this way of having to enter that command line every time, because it doesn't really affect the configuration and still you can type Hebrew.
> Does anyone know what the essence is, when you type things, of switching between left-to-right to the other way round?
> 
> One funny thing: For instance, in this rather primitive email program i'm using, if I type some Hebrew word such as
> 
> ???????
> 
> ("jerusalem")
> 
> anyway I hope you actually see some real hebrew here)
> 
> and then if I type the space key, the cursor moves to the wrong side of the word, that is to the beginning of it on the right.
> And in file names, for example, imagine I have a file named
> 
> hebrew.sxw
> 
> and I type that in Hebrew, it would read:
> 
> sxw.?????
> 
> Which is in a way logical, and in another way funny. Why not
> 
> ?????.sxw
> ?
> 
> because the basics of the way KDE works, for example, is still "left-to-right", isn't it?
> 
> So my question would be if anyone knows the "secrets" of this basic issue, just out of curiosity.
> 
> Many greetings
> 
> Herman
> 
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> 

This doesn't answer your question, but I think that you'd like to
know. I have been using Fedora Core 3 with KDE 3.x for a few months
now, and I find that the hebrew support is excellent. Much better even
than on Windows. I shift-space from language to language, and I have
an indicator on the task bar. I haven't seen any backwards hebrew yet,
even on the internet. my files do come out with the extension on the
right side, ירושלים.txt but I never felt that that was weird. And what
is nice, in konquerer, all my files are aligned to the right.

Dotan

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