[XeTeX] Ancient Hebrew font problem

[Kirk Lowery]

2010/8/23 Carsten Ziegert <carsten_ziegert at sil.org>

> Hi,
>
> I am facing a problems with hebrew vowels while trying three different
> fonts (see example file):
>
> With SBL Hebrew and Ezra SIL, the vowels are too much on the left under
> the consonants.
> Cardo seems ok, except for shureq (leftmost letter of the third and
> fourth word from the left). The point is on the right hand side of the
> Waw consonant instead of on the left.
>
> System specs: Ubuntu Karmic, fontspec 2010/08/01 v2.0c,
> XeTeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2-0.996-patch2 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>
> What can I do to achieve the correct vowel adjustment? Does anyone have
> experiences with fonts for Biblical Hebrew?
>

Doing cantillated Hebrew is my day job. And I use XeLaTeX as my preferred
system for academic publishing.

I modified your minimal example to contrast the two methods. Note the
differences in the prologue. SBL Hebrew comes out right, SIL Ezra does not
(no disparagement of SIL Ezra!).

\documentclass{scrbook}
\usepackage{fontspec,xltxtra,xunicode,bidi}
\defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}
\setromanfont[Mapping=tex-text]{TeX Gyre Schola}
%Set up for Biblical Hebrew
\TeXXeTstate=1
\newfontfamily{\sbl}[Script=Hebrew]{SBL Hebrew}


\begin{document}
%
\section*{SBL Hebrew}
\RL{\sbl{הָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ}}
\section*{Ezra SIL}
\newcommand{\heb}[1]{\TeXXeTstate=1{\fontspec{Ezra SIL}\beginR{#1}\endR}}
\heb{וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ}
\end{document}

Others here can no doubt explain the technical reasons why the first example
works and the second does not.

-- 
Blessings,

Kirk
--
Kirk E. Lowery, PhD
President & Senior Research Fellow
The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research
http://www.GrovesCenter.org/blogs/kirk
--
$DO || ! $DO ; try
try: command not found
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