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Hebrew and LaTeX - info



Hi all,
My experience with hebrew and latex:
There was an old version that worked with latex 2.09 (very old), and wasn't
updated until recently. I found the easiest way to install it is to install
NTeX, a TeX distribution (that was (is?) standard in slackware), and with
only a small fix (which took me days to find - I am a newbie to tex), it
worked.
I used it a few weeks, then decided it is too old for me (both latex 2.09
and NTeX in general - it seems to me this distribution is going to die
soon and tetex wins). Than I uninstaled NTeX in favor of tetex (I use debian,
and tetex is standard), and after some time found out that debian also
contains ArabTex. I installed it, and tried to use it. my problems:
1. It is slow (because it does all the bidi stuff using macros).
2. It has problems with last letters (OTIOT SOFIOT).
3. It doesn't let you use normal latex commands - you have to 'allow' them
   in the sources to use them.
4. It is not desinged to be used in long hebrew (or arab) documents - only
   in english ones with a bit of hebrew (arab) scattered.

A few days ago I saw one of the replys to the original question, and very
excited I looked around and found it. It seems almost a year ago, the
original hebrew support was updated, without me notice. It was updated
by Boris Lavva from the technion. Then Rama Porrat copied it to huji
and made some changes (she is a long time hebrew tex woman). So now
you have two places to take it from:
ftp://tochna.technion.ac.il/pub/staff/lavva/heblatex/
is the 'original'. To install it, you download everything in this directory,
and you need the sources for babel. I found the easiest way to download
these sources is to download the whole tetex sources of debian from ftp.tau
to /tmp of some univ server (if you have an account - I realy don't know
of a commercial ISP that gives you telnet accounts - so if you use one
you'll probably have to download the original babel from a CTAN mirror)
and take the babel directory home.
Then, follow the instructions - they worked for me.
The other option is to look at Rama's files at
ftp://ftp.cc.huji.ac.il/pub/tex/unix/new
this directory contains the 'original' files, but has another Installation
guide, that poinst to various directories on ftp.cc.huji.
I didn't try this. It seems to be easier, because everything you need is
on ftp.cc.huji, and most of the work was done for you (by Rama, I guess).

How to use it?
There are many examples there (ftp.cc.huji). I personally have all (most?)
of the tetex packages from debian, and vim 5.0 that supports hebrew.
I made 4 vi macros to move between hebrew and english, and this works
for me. I also made it possible (here at home - for my family) to use
QText with latex. Version 2.52 of qtext was free, is on ftp.cc.huji, and
works just fine under dosemu. with some tiny programs (to reverse, to
trans dos heb-> unix heb, and some hebrew translations for latex macros),
it works ok.

If I have time soon, I might make a debian package of all this. Or maybe
ask someone of tetex to include it. If there are people here with contacts
in either places (I know some of the subscribers are also subscribed to
some debian lists), you are welcome to do it :-) as I never even tried
to look how one makes such a package.

I am sorry this is so long,
Hope this helps,

didi