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Re: Hebrew Browser



On Tue, 1 Aug 2000, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:

> Richard Fiedler wrote:
> > What is the story with the Netscape Browsers Hebrew capability on Linux.

Generally - viewing visual hebrew works fine with Netscape, kfm (from kde
1) and lynx. More details below

> 
> You can watch Visual Hebrew based pages (like Walla, IOL, and most
> others in Hebrew - as long as they are Visual Hebrew). Visual Hebrew is
> what used to be standard in Israel to build pages. However - things
> seems to be changing, and some sites (like Globes, Yedioth Ahronoth
> [ynet.co.il]) are moving to Logical Hebrew.
> 
> For Windows users it's not a problem to watch Logical Hebrew if he's
> running Explorer. You can watch Logical Hebrew in Netscape if you're
> using Windows 98/95, but not NT or Windows 2000 (guys? am I wrong on
> this one?)
> 
> Unfortunately, Netscape on Linux can only show you Visual Hebrew based
> pages. Not logical Hebrew. 

Right. (Although there is one small kludge to get semi-logical display in
netscape. See http:/linux.rg.il/pub/Hebrew/00INDEX.html#biditext)

>                            Also - you'll need to install some RPM
> packages which includes fonts, 

Not exactly correct. You can use any resonable hebrew font. If you can't
install MS's True-Type fonts then you'll have to do with Eli Marmor's
fonts. See the IGLU faq (somewhere in the Hebrew section - about hebrew
fonts in X) for more information

>                                and patch your Netscape to add Visual
> Hebrew support (so that it won't screw your english settings) onthe
> Encoding menu.

Not exactly correct either. Netscape can be easily made to use hebrew
fonts for the latin codepage (or any other codepage - if you don't want to
mess the settings of your latin1 fonts. Although using, say, arial for
the latin1 font is not a terrible thing)

To do that you should add  the following X resource (you can simply add
this line to your $HOME/.Xdefaults):
Netscape*documentFonts.charset*iso8859-8: iso-8859-1
This will allow you to iso-8859-8 (hebrew) fonts as the fonts of the
iso-8859-1 (latin) codepage.

There s also a simple script to patch the netscape binary to allow it to
use the hebrew codepage instead of the Turkish one. You can find that
script in the FAQ, under hebrew->hebrew in browsers->netscape . It works
for me.

Note that if you also want to write hebreww in forms and not see it as
gibrish you have to set the iso-8859-1 font as a hebrew one as well.

One other limitation of netscape: It does not display UTF8 (unicde) pages
with hebrewunicode chars as hebrew (kfm and lynx do this translation
well).

> 
> You might be interested in Mozilla for browsing Hebrew web pages
> (www.mozilla.org). It should support Both Hebrew standards (Logical And
> Visual). However - While the Windows version of Mozilla supports Hebrew
> both on Logical andVisual, the Linux version supports currently on the
> Visual Hebrew (hopefully the IBM guys will finally implement the same
> Logical Hebrew routines soon!).

Can anybody give a status report on hebrew in mozilla? I wasn't following
it lately.
On march they had a preeliminary code ready. However due to some
disaggreements with the maintaners of mozilla it was stalled. On june they
rewrote their code, and AFAIK the code exists. I believe that it is in the
CVS, but is IFDEFed out.

Also: Hetz: can I use Konquerer as a stand-alone web browser (with no
desktop attached)?

> > Also Hebrew Email on Linux.

With email you will want to use logical hebrew.

> 
> There are some programs like Hebrew based Pine (Pine 4.10hI think), but
> I don't have a location of the file.

There are versions of that patch to 3.95, 4.10 and 4.21 . You can find a
link (and an rpm) on the 00INDEX page above. However - it uses visual
hebrew (aand lines with fixed length) so I would advise aginst using it.

Actually - using hebrew email is doable with the existing software. I
started to write a description of one clumsy way to do it in the Hebrew
FAQ (although I only got as far as explaining how to view hebrew mail). 
&alef;&bet;&lamed; &zayin;&he; &alef;&pe;&shin;&resh;&yod;.

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir



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