Hebrew Typography

Because (fully pointed) Hebrew makes extensive use of diacritic marks, for vowels and for accent marks ( meteg), it poses unique problems both for text-entry and for printing.

In terms of printing, it is usually the case that several ``glyphs''[+] must be printed one over the other; further, the location of the vowels varies depending on the letter under which they are printed. Consider, for example, ``[[HEBREW]]''

Several points are of interest. First, the first letter contains a bet, a dagesh and a chiriq. The chiriq is centered under the bet. Under the resh we find a sh'va, but rather than being centered, it is printed under the stem of the resh. Under the taf we find two vowel-marks: segol and meteg. Finally, under the final chaf, note that the kamatz is raised. Programs that can incorporate all of the refinements displayed here are rare, even though such refinements are necessary for properly typeset Hebrew. Often, programs will fail to raise the kamatz under a final chaf, or fail to keep it in place under a final kaf (as in ``[[HEBREW]]''

) Other programs cannot print a meteg. Still others do not correctly position vowels under resh and daled. Other minor problems also abound.

For the same reasons, text entry is often difficult. There are not sufficient symbols on the keyboard to allow for every combination of vowels and letters, and so more than one keystroke will be necessary for each letter. This alone makes entering Hebrew a time consuming process. In addition, many programs require the user to choose between several location of each vowel, some used with resh and daled, under which the vowel is moved to the right somewhat, others with final letters, and others yet with ``ordinary'' letters. A failure to enter the correctly positioned vowel will result in very poor printed text. (The merits and quality of various printing options are discussed below, in Section 4.6)