Control Panel. Regional and Language Options. Languages. Set option for right-to-left and complex script support.

I did that, and Windows copied over some files from the Installation CD, but I'm still seeing question marks.

Does anything else need to be turned on?

Thanks,
Mike

Mike,

Try this:
double-click directly on the text/question marks; a double click will highlight the whole text.
Then go to Font Menu & just pick any Hebrew font.

I can see the Hebrew Fonts (in Word), but it's not letting me select it. It's defaulting to Courier New.

> It’s defaulting to Courier New.

And what's wrong with Courier New? :^)

I don't understand. What do you mean by "I can see the Hebrew Fonts...."? Font menu? the text/question marks?; "but it’s not letting me select it" — Word?

In Microsoft Word I can see the Hebrew fonts in the font menu, but if I select one it doesn't do anything.

> but if I select one it doesn’t do anything.

Well......If you want email me the file/text (or part of it) and I'll check it here.

Sure, what is your email?

through Typophile — see my profile

Sent. Thanks!

When a text file displays Hebrew as question marks, this means the text is not not recognized.

The customer's program that saved the text file exported the Hebrew text data as Unicode encoding for Hebrew, but in a file format (i.e. .txt) that does not support Unicode.

The customer must resend the file to you in a different file format.

The customer must resend the file to you taking into consideration two factors:

1. The file format must support Unicode.

2. You have a program that can read the file or import it correctly.

.doc from MicroSoft is a very good file format to transfer Hebrew text, as most people have MicroSoft Word XP or later.
.doc files from MicroSoft Word XP or later support both Unicode encoding and Hebrew.

After you finally get the file, to create an animated gif or a .jpg with the Hebrew text, it must appear right-to-left. You can use Adobe PhotoShop ME (it must be a ME -Middle East- edition).

Contact www.fontworld.com for more information.

The ISO-8859-8 hebrew encoding is still in use (I regularly receive emails with that encoding). If you have an ISO-8859-8 encoded file and need a utf8 input, you can use the free recode facility (that is a Unix command but there are non unix ports). I installed recode on my mac and if file.txt is ISO-8859-8 encoded, then the command

recode hebrew..utf8 file.txt

results in file.txt being utf8 encoded (as you see, recode overwrites). To see all the encodings that recode can handle, type recode --list in a shell window.

Michel

You may try Notepad++ (free program) to open the file. It is possible to change the encoding to utf8. It is possible to store utf8 information in a plain text file, what matters is the right encoding in the editor. I see no way to change it within the windows editor, but the editor is capable to show hebrew text, even vocalized text.

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I just installed Notepad++. Looks nice but seems to handle only the following encodings: ANSI, UTF-8 and UCS-2 (big and small endian). Here is a file that should display correctly (but left justified) in a browser but that is not utf-8 encoded. Save it by right-clicking on the link and open the file morfix.html with Notepad++; if you can manage to have it display properly within Notepad++, please tell me how you did.

(have you tried to drag the txt file into your web-browser?)
OK. It is not possible to open the html file directly via notepad++ directly. I created a new utf encoded file, opened the html file with my browser and copied the text into the notepad file. That worked, please have a look:

Was it a helpful hint?

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I don't think these credible options will work in your case, because the text file no longer contains the Hebrew text, but only the codesa for an exclamation mark. In other words, it's a useless file, no matter how hard you huff and puff.

I have been around Hebrew files to typeset, and have run into every imaginable problem.

The latest problem of the exclamation marks is related to the solution: Unicode, which assigns a code value to every letter, symbol, or glyph belonging to most every language of the world.

However, transfer of data by one userto another, when each user uses a different software program poses a small challenge. Unfortunately, one user chooses a file format that doesn't support Unicode, and the resulting file only contains exclamation marks.

This is like any good invention. Instead of trying to repair the results, it is wiser and best to simply start over again from before the error happenned.

> Was it a helpful hint?

That does help anwering the initial question, namely what to do when a text that does not want to display. I did not tell you but the text that may not want to display is http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~boyer/typophile/morfix.txt. It is a text file. As soon as you can manage to display its content, you can usually copy and paste as you did.

The problem is thus finding a first way to display. One way is to use recode and produce a utf-8 encoded replacement. Another way is to use TextEdit on the macintosh because TextEdit accepts ISO-8859-8 encoded text inputs (and can write utf-8 files). Another way is to add a few lines on top and bottom of morfix.txt to transform it into an html file, and specify that the charset is windows-1255. That is exactly how I produced the link morfix.html.

There may be other tricks to display. Of course, you could use yourself Notepad++ to transform the .txt file into the html file the way I did and then use some browser and finally copy/paste. It however seems that Notepad++ still cannot do what TextEdit does, i.e. do it directly. That is what I wanted to know. Thanks.

It would have been easier:

> Open the txt file with your browser
> see the strange symbols
> Change "View" to "Hebrew Iso-8859" within the browser.
> Copy the text ;-)

The browser is some kind of "work around".

I guess, your problem is solved?

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> It would have been easier:

Indeed... And I must confess that is something I sometimes have to do even on html files when I browse. The browser is indeed a "work around".

> I guess, your problem is solved?

All that is good on plain text, or some html documents. For me that's enough, since I almost exclusively typeset with LaTeX and LaTeX inputs are text files (and LaTeX can also handle various encodings). In fact, I need to recode only when colleagues tell me they can't use my files. For those professionals that require more sophisticated inputs I am afraid life may not be that easy.

I am using LaTeX with XeTeX to produce hebrew-german documents. With XeTeX I am able to use unicode-documents and OpenType fonts...

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rosem,

Do any of these things work?

I would be surprized if you can pull intelligent Hebrew words out of a bunce of exclamation marks, like Moses got water from a rock. :)

Israel

Here is in pictures what Chajm says above. First here is what I see on my mac when I click on this link.

That does not look good indeed. My browser was being told that files are by default utf8 and the link cannot be read as utf8 text. Now I tell my browser to display the same link, but I tell my browser that the encoding is "Hebrew"...

Here is what I now get on my screen

That may not be perfect (the display on Chaim's editor shown above had no trouble with the final period and commas) but at least the "question marks" are now replaced by Hebrew text. The link never contained question marks, it just contained information that my browser could not make sense of because it made no sense as a utf8 text.

Michel

PS If I click ISO-8859-8 the text displays in the wrong direction (Hebrew is written from left to right).

Michel,

It seems I'm wrong, for many years. Wow! How many clients had to resend their text files to me as .doc files. Hmmm.

This is like waking up each morning, going to work by getting the car and saying 'good morning' to your neighbor doing the same thing, and his onding back, 'have a nice day.'

'Such a nice guy,' you think.

You thought wrong, because ten years later he is arrested for being a serial rapist for ten years.

You think, 'boy, was I wrong 'bout him'.

:)

Israel

> Wow! How many clients had to resend their text files to me as .doc files. Hmmm.

If that solved your problems, great! I remember a time when a doc file produced on a pc caused trouble on a mac because all those French accented letters are coded differently on the two platforms. For me (and many colleagues) receiving a doc file was no solution, it was a problem! With a .txt file, we could at least recode, thanks to that recode program written by François Pinard who was for many years in my university (Université de Montréal) computing services. Today, many applications accept to read a wide choice of encodings. Times are changing.

Michel