Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

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Bernard Cooperman
Got the styles thing figured out
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Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:58 pm

Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by Bernard Cooperman »

Hi all.

I know this topic has been dealt with already, but I can't find an answer to my specific problem and wonder if someone could help me. I have a document written in Lucida Grande and Lucida Bright. The footnotes are mostly in Times New Roman. I have to export the document into MSWord. When I do, the Hebrew in the main text reverses itself. I tried downloading Open Office which solved the problem of the text direction, but the footnotes are erratic. I noticed on the forum that people suggested changing the footnotes from Times New Roman to Helvetica or Lucida Grande, but I want a serif font for various reasons.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

BTW, I'm still using Mellel 2.5. Would upgrading to 2.6 make a difference?

Berny Cooperman
Bernard Dov Cooperman
Dept. of History
2115 Francis Scott Key Hall
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742
301-405-4271
301-314-9199 fax
rpcameron
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Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by rpcameron »

I doubt it would make a difference, but changing the font before the export, then changing it back after the export might be the best solution. The problem may be the manner in which the fonts deal with BiDi characters. Also, are you sure that you are using the most current version of TNR? The version that is often found on the Mac often does not properly support RTL languages, and one needs to use the TNR that ships with Windows.

Why Microsoft continues to neglect the Mac is beyond this discussion, but the disparity of fonts and their features has often been the problem working with multilingual documents between OSes.
— Robert Cameron
jannuss
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Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by jannuss »

Bernard Cooperman wrote: I noticed on the forum that people suggested changing the footnotes from Times New Roman to Helvetica or Lucida Grande, but I want a serif font for various reasons.
Berny,

Times New Roman is a notoriously bad font that causes problems with RtL languages. Not only is the font itself trouble, but there are so many different versions of it "in the wild" that you can never be certain what your correspondent is using. Don't use this font!

Other fonts that might suit you are David, New Peninim, and Titus Cyberbit
Bernard Cooperman
Got the styles thing figured out
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:58 pm

Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by Bernard Cooperman »

Thank you all for your replies. Questions:
(1) am I correct that the Hebrew currently being displayed in my footnotes is in fact a part of the font called "Times New Roman"? (When I select the text, Mellel's Main Font Pallette displays TNR and the Secondary Font Pallette is greyed out)?
(2) assuming that I can find, download, and install the version of TNR that ships with Windows, will it work with the Mac?
(3) if I buy David or install New Pninim (from an old Mac OS) or Titus, will they provide only a substitute for the Hebrew or are they all-inclusive in that they will cover the English as well? I.e., will they become the Main Font or the Secondary Font in my text?
(4) If I use David, New Pninim or Titus, how can I be sure that the PC users and Web gurus who have to read, format and post my material online will have these fonts?

Finally:
I found that I can export the Mellel Hebrew text into Open Office with no problem (tho there are still occasional formatting footnotes), but not into MS Word which reverses the letters, not just with NTR but also with Lucida Grande. Is there any solution to this?
Bernard Dov Cooperman
Dept. of History
2115 Francis Scott Key Hall
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742
301-405-4271
301-314-9199 fax
jannuss
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Joined: Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 am
Location: Israel

Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by jannuss »

Berny, we need to go back to the basics.

To get Hebrew working properly you should define a Main font [for English] and a Secondary font [with script=Hebrew] for Hebrew. Now, when you switch from English input to Hebrew input [either using the flag menu or a keyboard shortcut] Mellel will automatically select the correct font and change from LtR text to RtL.

Have you read the Writing Hebrew Tutorial available on the Redlers' Tips & Guides page?
http://www.redlers.com/supporttutorials.html

OK . . . now do a test: create two Character Styles in Style Sets/Edit Style Sets, one with Main & Secondary fonts for your regular text and the other for your footnotes. [don't use Times New Roman] Produce a one-page document with text and footnote and Export it in RTL format. Try opening this new file in WORD. Any joy?

Janet
rpcameron
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Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by rpcameron »

Bernard Cooperman wrote:Thank you all for your replies. Questions:
(1) am I correct that the Hebrew currently being displayed in my footnotes is in fact a part of the font called "Times New Roman"? (When I select the text, Mellel's Main Font Pallette displays TNR and the Secondary Font Pallette is greyed out)?
(2) assuming that I can find, download, and install the version of TNR that ships with Windows, will it work with the Mac?
(3) if I buy David or install New Pninim (from an old Mac OS) or Titus, will they provide only a substitute for the Hebrew or are they all-inclusive in that they will cover the English as well? I.e., will they become the Main Font or the Secondary Font in my text?
(4) If I use David, New Pninim or Titus, how can I be sure that the PC users and Web gurus who have to read, format and post my material online will have these fonts?
  1. If the font indicated in the Character Appearance palette is Times New Roman (regardless of whether the secondary font dropdown is enabled), then this is the currently used font. However, if the version of TNR installed on your system does not have the Hebrew characters in them, Mellel may be using a similar font for substitution but not specifying which font is being used in the interface. Therefore, your best option is to create a character style that uses your preferred Latin font as the primary, and a font that you know has Hebrew characters as your secondary font, with the script indicated as Hebrew.
  2. You will have no issue installing and using a font that ships with Windows (or is specified as a Windows font) with OS X. However, as has been stated many times previously, Times New Roman should not be used for Hebrew. It may technically support the script, but—especially if you plan on sharing your documents in digital format with other users—you cannot be certain of the level of support that other computers have with TNR.
  3. You can provide links to the fonts you use for others so they may be certain to have the same fonts (and versions of those fonts) that you are using. There is no way to guarantee that their installation is the same as yours, or that they can properly view the documents. If you are sharing them via a webpage, then you can use CSS to define a series of font preferences, so if they do not have the specific font, the page will gracefully degrade while still displaying the proper content. I would not recommend using fonts from MacOS 9, since most of them were not Unicode fonts and used different or proprietary encodings. Make sure you use Unicode fonts, as this will help ensure compatibility.
  4. Most modern fonts available today include a full complement of Latin characters. You should have no problem using those fonts as your primary font in Mellel, and when you start entering Hebraic text Mellel will automatically use the Hebrew characters from that font. However, as I previously stated, the best way to handle the situation is to create a character style with your preferred text/body font as the primary, and set up the secondary script for Hebrew and the secondary font for the one of your choosing for Hebraic text. (This is also the best way if you plan on using other scripts beyond Latin and Hebrew, too, whether in the current document or in the future.)
I hope this has answered most of your questions. Also, as Janet indicated, check with the Hebrew tutorial found on the Redlers' website. Then use that as a guide to create a text document, export it to Word, and report back with the results. Also, two other good Hebrew fonts you might want to look in to are Ezra SIL and SBL Hebrew.
— Robert Cameron
eleuteruiz
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Re: Exporting Hebrew text to MS Word

Post by eleuteruiz »

Bernard Cooperman wrote: Finally:
I found that I can export the Mellel Hebrew text into Open Office with no problem (tho there are still occasional formatting footnotes), but not into MS Word which reverses the letters, not just with NTR but also with Lucida Grande. Is there any solution to this?
AFAIK MS Word in Mac simply does not support Unicode text, so your Hebrew will always get messed up. That's an old unresolved MS Word problem.

Eleuterio
Eleuterio
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