[osis-core] [off-topic] quick question for Hebrew scholar

[Patrick Durusau]

Harry,

Sorry for the delayed response! Was in the middle of a three hour 
con-call when your post first arrived.

The conversion works, at least with snippets, because IE is reversing 
the strings of Hebrew characters based on their default ordering.

In a "normal" Unicode text, the byte stream is always left to right, so 
display is a function of shifting the characters into a display order.

It can cause problems with combining characters, since not all rendering 
software follows the same rules.


Patrick

Harry Plantinga wrote:

>I'm working on a program that converts HTML files
>using Greek and Hebrew fonts such as SIL Galatia
>or Hebraica to Unicode. 
>
>The conversion seems to work correctly, but the 
>Hebrew in the Unicode version is reversed compared 
>to the source file, which was a word document using 
>the font Hebraica.
>
>Presumably, this is because Hebraica is a left-to-
>right font, but Unicode Hebrew displays right-to-
>left, at least in Win XP/IE 6.0.
>
>QUESTION:  is the Hebrew here OK?  I.e. is it OK
>that the characters are reversed compared to the
>source document?
>
>http://www.ccel.org/~hplantin/hebrew.htm [view with
>Win XP/IE 6 or another browser that supports Hebrew
>Unicode with right-to-left rendering]
>
>-Harry
>

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu