Why doesn't the font work? This question most commonly arises after someone has downloaded Mike Hebrew, opened the file and not seen any Hebrew! What they see is "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz 1234567890". Blame Microsoft for this! When you open a Hebrew font in Windows, an application that can not display Hebrew is run. This of course is stupid but there it is.
How can I see all the characters in your font? Download one of the many font viewers that can display all the characters in a Unicode font, for instance Unicode Font Viewer for Windows
What should I do before downloading? Make sure that Hebrew works on your computer before downloading Mike Hebrew. You should look for Hebrew fonts already on your machine and learn how to use them. For instance Arial and Times Roman usually contain Hebrew. If these fonts have a file size of more than 200 Kbyte then they will contain many languages including Hebrew.
How do I make Hebrew work on my machine? Each operating system does this in a different way so read the Help. Enabling bi-directional text display and multinational keyboard entry are somewhat separate and each need to be attended to. Start by looking at Israeli newspapers with your Internet browser, you may need to change the "Character Encoding" to get Hebrew to appear. Next try to cut and paste from a newspaper article into your word processor. The text should be the same except the font used may change to the default on your machine. When these things work, download Mike Hebrew and it should work in the same way.
Why doesn't Mike Hebrew work in my Word Processor? Your wordprocessor may use a proprietary font. Mike Hebrew is a Unicode font so check that your word processor supports Unicode for editing.
Why do I have difficulties with left to right editing? When left to right text is imbedded into Hebrew Text, for example numbers or English words, word processors try to recognize what you are trying to do and of course they may try to help. Some word processors have strong views on the nature of the text they are displaying. I recently encountered a word processor, insisting that commas be Western and therefore left to right rather than Hebrew and therefore right to left. The offending comma would be in (say) Times Roman and could not be set to Mike Hebrew.
Here you have a choice, either learn to defeat the offending word processor or switch to a less opinionated one. See the question below on which wordprocessor I use.
Does Mike Hebrew work on the Mac? Yes it does. The fonts are True Type fonts and are supported. However the files have not been packaged using Stuffit nor have they been put into a suitcase. You will need to put the fonts one by one into the font directory.
What Hebrew Word Processors can I use?
For a survey of Unicode word processors see
Alan Woods web site.
On Windows XP, I use Microsoft Word 2002 which has built in formatting for Hebrew.
I also use AbiWord, a
word processor similar to Word but with a simpler user interface.
It is FREE.
I also use Open Office Writer is also
similar to Word and is FREE.
If you find your word processor on the PC does a good but not
perfect job at formatting
nikud (vowel points) and cantillation (for chanting),
then read the next question.
On Macintosh OSX, I have used Mellel which is professional
word processor optimized for producing dual language texts. Mellel uses Unicode.
The vowels are not placed correctly The vowels (or "points" or "niqud") are not placed correctly under the letters. This maybe very noticable when typing in Hebrew.
On Windows, Hebrew is formatted by a piece of software called Uniscribe. This software also deals with numerous far eastern languages. You need to have a fairly recent version of this software. The one that comes when you install Google Earth is good.
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