Posted: Sun May 16, 2010 8:51 pm Post subject: Problem with Hebrew documents
The last two versions of neooffice have had the following problem with my previously saved hebrew docs: The font randomly changes on a few lines per page, but does not register as a different font. I am attaching a sample file and would appreciate some help/advice.
Thank you.
I do not think that this is a NeoOffice problem but, instead, what you are likely seeing is one of the following:
- You have set your entire document to use the Palatino font which does not exist on most Mac OS X machines. If your machine does not have the Palatino font installed, NeoOffice must try to find a "fallback" font to use and since Palatino does not exist on your machine, the first font supports Hebrew characters (only a few Mac OS X fonts support Hebrew) is used as the "fallback" font.
- You have the Palatino font installed on your machine but it does not support Hebrew characters. In that is the case, NeoOffice will also find the first font on your machine that supports Hebrew and use that to display the Hebrew characters that the Palatino font does not support.
In all cases, the font listed in the Font Name listbox in the toolbar is the font that the author of the document requested. You will never see the fallback font. So, if you really want your Hebrew document to use a specific font, I would recommend setting your document to a font like the Raanana font that is on all Mac OS X machines like Raanana that supports Hebrew characters.
If you are sharing your documents with OpenOffice.org Windows or Linux users, then it gets a little more complicated as you need to use a font that is both on Mac OS X and Windows and/or Linux that supports Hebrew characters but I am not sure if such a common font exists on all of those operating systems.
Does the above explanation of the font "fallback" process that you are seeing make sense?
If you are sharing your documents with OpenOffice.org Windows or Linux users, then it gets a little more complicated as you need to use a font that is both on Mac OS X and Windows and/or Linux that supports Hebrew characters but I am not sure if such a common font exists on all of those operating systems.
FYI. If you are working with Windows and/or Linux users, I found that the SBL Hebrew is a free serif font that supports Hebrew characters. It is a Windows font that I can confirm installs and works on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and higher.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 4:21 pm Post subject: Hebrew font
Thank you for your reply. I am pretty sure Palatino supports Hebrew characters, as I have used it with other word processors. If my machine does not have it, I am still confused as to why most of the document shows the palatino font (the whole thing was typed on this machine). Also, the older versions of neooffice do not have this problem.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 6:54 pm Post subject: Re: Hebrew font
Joeyci wrote:
Thank you for your reply. I am pretty sure Palatino supports Hebrew characters, as I have used it with other word processors. If my machine does not have it, I am still confused as to why most of the document shows the palatino font (the whole thing was typed on this machine). Also, the older versions of neooffice do not have this problem.
Maybe we are talking about different problems. From what I understood, Palatino is a primary a Greek character font so I assumed that you are seeing fallback to a different font for Hebrew characters.
The font fallback process has not changed in nearly 3 years so maybe you are seeing a different problem? If so, can you take a snapshot of some the characters that have the problem you are seeing and attach the snapshot image?
You can take a screen snapshot of an area on the screen by pressing the Command-Shift-4 and dragging a rectangle around an area no the screen. When you release the mouse, a .png file will be created on your Desktop that you can attach to this forum topic.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 8:06 pm Post subject: Hebrew font
Thanks for your speedy replies. I think there was a miscommunication, here's a screenshot of my problem. The smaller font is [normal looking] palatino. The larger, thinner font is the uninvited one (I think it's what is normally called davidka).
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 8:11 pm Post subject: Re: Hebrew font
Joeyci wrote:
Thanks for your speedy replies. I think there was a miscommunication, here's a screenshot of my problem. The smaller font is [normal looking] palatino. The larger, thinner font is the uninvited one (I think it's what is normally called davidka).
Ah, I think I see what you seeing. One line is using falling back to Arial and the others are fine. I will reinstall the SBL Hebrew font and see if I can reproduce the problem.
In the meantime, do you know where I can download the Palatino font that you use? There are a myriad of Palatino fonts out there on the web and, if at all possible, I would like to install the same font that you have.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 8:23 pm Post subject: Hebrew font
Thank you. I'm not sure where I got it, I don't have any word processors installed on this machine besides neooffice, and have not downloaded any fonts; so I assume you already have this one installed. If there's any way I can provide you with more information about it let me know.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2010 8:37 pm Post subject: Re: Hebrew font
Joeyci wrote:
Thank you. I'm not sure where I got it, I don't have any word processors installed on this machine besides neooffice, and have not downloaded any fonts; so I assume you already have this one installed. If there's any way I can provide you with more information about it let me know.
I installed the SBL Hebrew font, set your all the text in your sample document to that font, but none of the lines showed the problem that you see.
Since you don't know where your Palatino font came from, can you give us some information about the font by doing the following:
1. Launch the /Applications/Font Book application, find the Palatino font and expand it, and select the "Regular" variant of that font
2. Select the Preview :: Show Font Info menu and copy what is in the "Version", "Location", and "Unique name" fields.
Hopefully that will give us an idea of where we can get that font.
From your font info, I think that the Palatino font was installed by Apple's iWork or iLife applications so I will download Apple's trial version and see if the font is in there.
From your font info, I think that the Palatino font was installed by Apple's iWork or iLife applications so I will download Apple's trial version and see if the font is in there.
My assumption was correct. When I installed the iWork Trial package, the same Palatino font was added to my machine.
What is interesting is that my original assertion that the Palatino font does not have any Hebrew characters was correct. If you look at the glyphs for that font in Apple's Character Viewer, you will so only Western European characters for that font.
So what does that mean? It means since there are no Hebrew characters in your Palatino font, NeoOffice falls back to the first font that it can find that supports Hebrew characters. That works fine for most lines but in lines like the one in your screen snapshot, the fallback font is unable to render one of more of the characters that line so a second fallback font is found (in your case it looks like the Arial font is used) and used for that line.
In my case, the initial fallback font is to the Arial font so I suspect that you have a custom Hebrew font installed on your machine that is being selected as the first fallback font and that font cannot support one or more characters in the lines that fall back to Arial.
So, the next step is to find out what that custom Hebrew font is. Can launch the /Applications/Font Book application and for each font that you think might support Hebrew characters that you find (that is, font names that contain "Hebrew" or sound Hebrew), do the following steps:
1. Select the Font Book applications Edit :: Disable Font menu.
2. Close and reopen your Hebrew document in NeoOffice.
3. Does the Hebrew document display entirely in the Arial font? If not, repeat the above steps. If so, the last font that you disabled is the font we are looking for. If you post the "Version", "Location", and "Unique name" fields from the Font Book application for that font, we can then figure out how to get a copy of that font.
Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 10:54 am Post subject: Hebrew font
I disabled all Hebrew fonts, but the document still shows up the same way. On your machine does the whole thing appear in Arial? Just curious.
Also, I don't know if this helps, but all of the characters used on the lines displaying in arial are used elsewhere in the document and display the same way as the rest of it.
Thanks again.
Howdy. When I opened your original document all characters had Palatino listed. But I noticed two things:
1. In NeoOffice > Preferences > Language Settings > Language, at the bottom, you do not have the option checked for "Enabled for Complex Text Layout". What happens when you click that box, and in the drop down just above it select Hebrew?
2. In NeoOffice > Preferences > NeoOffice Writer > Basic Fonts (CTL) it lists "tahoma" for all font choices, however, the font is actually "Tahoma." My guess is that the font in Hebrew actually is trying to make it Tahoma, not Arial or Palatino; but the font needs to be changed to the actual font with capital T. When I did that, then the entire document changed.
I have found that in addition to SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL SR is an excellent Hebrew font and is cross platform as well.
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