Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!lakesys!mikes
From: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com (Mike Shawaluk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: typing right-to-left
Keywords: word processors, AmigaTeX, LaTeX
Message-ID: <1249@lakesys.lakesys.com>
Date: 30 Oct 89 12:51:33 GMT
References: <1989Oct22.191705.5211@contact.uucp> <15984@pollux.UUCP>
Reply-To: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk)
Organization: Lake Systems - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Lines: 36

In article <15984@pollux.UUCP> bjc@pollux.UUCP () writes:
>Does a word processor exist that can handle both English and Hebrew in the
>same document?  There are Hebrew word processors - there is even a PD one
>on CompuServe - but it cannot handle the standard alphabet.  
> 
>I ask because I offered that PD word processor to a Hebrew professor at al
>local seminary.  They have over 1000 students studying Hebrew there every
>semester, and I felt it would be helpful.  I learned that not only this
>seminary, but all of the schools of religion in their association are
>searching for a word processor for their teachers and students to use.  They
>need to be able to insert Hebrew words into regular text.  THey don't mind
>having to allow for the left-right and right-left typing, if only they
>can mix the characters.  
>
>If such a program exists, it would be a service to let these people know
>about it.

I would think that just about any word processor that uses standard Amiga
fonts for display/printing of text (such as excellance! or PenPal) should be
able to fill this need.  Of course, you would need an Amiga Hebrew font,
which some enterprising soul would have to create via FontEd, assuming that
there isn't one out there already, and you would have to type in the
characters left-to-right.  (You say in your previous paragraph that this
wouldn't be a problem)

Or would you?  Isn't there an Amiga font attribute specifying which direction
the characters are rendered?  But even if there were such a font with the
appropriate attribute set, I doubt whether any word processor out there would
have been designed to take this into account (which is a bit of a shame,
since these kind of insights are what made the Amiga the unique and powerful
system it is, IMHO.)
-- 
   - Mike Shawaluk             
"Rarely have we seen a mailer  ->  DOMAIN: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com 
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