Hebrew fonts?

[_Tom_Fussy_]

I am in N. America trying to purchase a Hebrew font for use in creating some bilingual documentation for a product my company will sell. We are trying, if possible, to use a Hebrew typeface that would be considered "compatible" with Frutiger. Problem is, I am not finding any Hebrew fonts at all on Adobe's website as is presented to me in N. America. Does Adobe have any Hebrew fonts? How can I access and purchase them?

[_Irwin_Scott_]

What? no he doesnt. The nikud is always in the same place below the baseline. He also puts the kamatz and shva on the chaf sofi under the baseline although modern printing always put it higher, but this was done on purpose by him because he believed that this was correct (personally I disagree, but hes dead so I cant argue with him).

I'm sorry. Everyone else does, as you yourself admit. But he was stubborn. I always put nikkud above and the taamim below. Period. Very consistant, and it works well graphically, instead of putting the kometz above except when theres a dagesh.

[raphaelfreeman]

Im not sure I understand what you mean then. What does Koren do that is inconsistent. Can you give me an example word?

[_Irwin_Scott_]

Look I dont know what Zvika did in the past nor do I know if his computers date was correct when he created fonts in the past. I only know what he has done for me and I know that he didnt work on Shabbat in the creation of the Koren font. I have follow the principle of assuming that if he did any averos in the past, he has done tshuva now. I think Artscroll must obviously follow the same principle.

That is very correct of you. I agree with you. Lets assume everything now is hunky dory with Tzvika. But if Tzvika violated the Shabbat in creating his Hadasa for ArtScroll, his teshuva is not accepted until all of ArtScroll's books are burned. Poor Meir - his father zal would say, I told you so, Meir. Spend the extra buck and buy Shmuel's.

[raphaelfreeman]

>I carefully didn't say that. To Hallel on a day the Sages did not authorize is against halacha, even if one believe sincerely that G-d made a miracle in creating the State. Otherwise, we would add Hallel to every day of our prayers, because the Talmud attests to the fact it is a miracle for us each day just to wake. Since there have to rules, so no Hallel is said on Yom Azmaoot. People in Gush no loner say Hallel on Yom Kippur.

Thank you for proving my point. So you wouldnt buy our siddur and neither do the charedim of bney brak. But they buy our tanakh because they accept that it is accurate. So perhaps you wont call it treif, but you think it goes against halakha so it amounts to the same thing. Anyway, back to the point that the Koren Tanakh is widely accepted amongst all Jews. (Incidentally the Siddur is typeset in a different Koren font that Koren created for the siddur).

[raphaelfreeman]

>That is very correct of you. I agree with you. Lets assume everything now is hunky dory with Tzvika. But if Tzvika violated the Shabbat in creating his Hadasa for ArtScroll, his teshuva is not accepted until all of ArtScroll's books are burned.

Again we are getting into religious debate now. I thought we agreed that this wasnt the place for that.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

Im not sure Im quite so holy as you. I have a problem in shul when davening and following the leyning because of course its all in the Koren font (our shul only allows Koren Chumashim and siddurim)

I don't understand what you're saying. You seem here to contradict every you said about Koren. If I understand you correctly, you'd rather daven in a shul with the old kind of Vilna chumashim. Are you saying this?

and of course Im there going, oy, the mercha should have been put lower (yes, Im serious).

Isn't mercha the curly taam with the right side pointing up, and the left side pointing to the left?

If so, I would center the side pointing up under the bottom tip, and allow the left side to be further left of the bottom tip. This is a graphic decision.

I would not center the entire width of the merca under the bottom tip.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

I know that Mr Koren was famous for his Thursday evening tactic. In Israel Friday isnt a workday and we work Sunday instead. At the end of the day on Thursday, he would collect all the work from every employee and take it home, only to return it on Sunday morning, lest anybody should accidentally come to work on Shabbat and work on the Koren Tanakh.

Mr. Koren was frum, even very modern?

I wonder that happened when they printed Bibles in the past. Probably not.

If non-Jews printed it on Shabbat, there is no violation of Shabbat, unless the printing Jewish owned property.

I doubt if the Romm brother the Romm widow allowed their non-Jewish worker to use their printing on Shabbat. No matter what people say about them and their modern ways. So, they didn't have peyot!

[raphaelfreeman]

>I don't understand what you're saying. You seem here to contradict every you said about Koren. If I understand you correctly, you'd rather daven in a shul with the old kind of Vilna chumashim. Are you saying this?

LOL. No, Im saying that I work for Koren and Im working on the digitisation of the Koren font. When Im in shul, Im supposed to be concentrating on davening, but of course Im using a Koren siddur or a Koren Chumash so when I see things that werent done so well, I start thinking, "oooh, I must program that mercha better" which of course is working on shabbat!

I thought we agreed that I had a sense of humour.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

(unless you dont like the mizrachi component)

Listen, if the Satmar get upset and everything, I'll buy you some marshmellows. :)

[_Irwin_Scott_]

Why do you assume somebody will mechalel shabbos. Thats not very generous of you.

If a secular Jew in Israel or anywhere violate the Shabbat, he or she is not mechalel Shabbos, rather he or she simply has not learned how beautiful it is to observe. That's the chovat gavra (ask Harbs); but if he or she produced a work on Shabbos, the work must be destroyed (chovas hoftza) - see Shulchan Orech.

Remember, Raphael, I'm a Lubavitcher who taught to love and mekarev every Jew.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

when you say automatically, what do you mean? Do you mean that the font can examine to see the shape of the nikud and team and then adjust accordingly, or do you have to tell it all the combinations?

Good question. Not exactly. Automatically means the font determines the narrow width factor of the letter, and then rearranges the entire of nikkud taam maybe meteg in a semblance to fit under the narrow.

Then, this is modified by rules, determined by the particular kind of nikkud, taam, maybe meteg.

Do you understand.

An appended data base could then tell the font that under those circumstances a slightly different fitting should be used instead. That's my contribution.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

Well thats a little more complicated because there are many different opinions. For example, using Israeli pronunciation, do you say tzahorayim (according to Sefardi masora) or tzohorayim (according to ashkenazi masora) again when I say ashkenazi masora, that means Shabbat and Chochma, but it means that the first kamatz becomes a kamatz katan.

Also, within tefilla, different parts of tefilla follow different rules, some parts follow the grammatical rules of the tanakh, some follow that of the rishonim and some follow that of modern hebrew. We have a team of rabbinical grammarians doing this for the new Koren Siddur for the USA, where the siddur has kamatz katan, shva na and metegs throughout the siddur.

Shva na follows a simple rule that no one debate. Farkash is working on making the entire Tanach with shva nas.

Now regarding komatz katan according to various views, this is no problem in software; only in print form.

How do you pay the team, by the hour?

[_Irwin_Scott_]

My point is that its okay to move the trop downwards.

Downwards? I must reread what you wrote, as I think I misunderstood.

If you are going to move the trop down, then put the nikud back in the correct position if possible. If not, then move the trop down and move the nikud. However, I never move the nikud by much and certainly dont want a nikud in the middle of the resh instead of the foot.

Remember that by design, the trop is thinner than the nikud (and the nikud thinner than the letters) therefore it will never stand out.

Adil Allawi of Ready Set Go in London showed his Koran with floating layers where one group of nikkud like marks were in black, and the second group of taam like marks were in red. The layers could be turned on or off at will, to aid the reader. Hence the distinction between the taam and nikkud need only to be by color, not by thickness or by higher or lower position.

The purpose of thickness is to draw attention that the thicker one is greater than the thinner. I think this is a wrong message to send. One is not more important than the other. Distinguish between them simply by color.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

The Guttman Vilna that came with Dagesh was of course Guttmans. There are other Vilnas out there which Guttman didnt create. I know that Kivun licensed Guttmans Toptype collection. Guttman also sold his fonts to Microsoft. However, if it doesnt say Guttman Vilna and just Vilna, then this isnt Guttmans and perhaps you have a very very old version of Dagesh before they licenced the Toptype library. However, things were a bit of a balagan at Accent/Kivun

I am referring to the ugly Vilna font used by every publisher in Israel or America, who make a Chumash, Shas etc, to save a few bucks in retypesetting G-d's holy books (how disgusting!)

Even Pierre, President and CEO of WinSoft in France, who made Adobe InDesign ME, said that Adobe should make a meaningful good will gesture and help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books using Adobe's software and the exact replica of the original Vilna typeface to show the entire world that the Jewish Bible and Talmud can be perfectly recreated and printed, and made also into searchable PDF. Furthermore, he said he'd tell Mr. John Warnock, now the Chairman of Adobe directly to his face.

Now, Raphael, isn't that the way it should be?

[Dov Isaacs]

This is one of the most unusual discussions ever to grace the Adobe User-to-User Forums. I almost mistook this for mail-jewish! :-)

But what I don't understand is why Adobe, a public nonsectarian company, should somehow as a "meaningful goodwill gesture ... help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books suing Adobe's software." This would put Adobe in direct competition with some of its customers who do this for a living. Plus, we have a hard enough time just getting enough resources to get our software developed, tested, debugged, and supported. (Maybe someday we'll actually be able to integrate InDesign ME's support of R-to-L languages into the mainline InDesign code and not have to have a separate edition whenever you want to use Ivrit for even part of a document!) And if we did all the classic Jewish holy books, why shouldn't be also do those for the Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, etc.? This really isn't Adobe's current business nor a business that we want to enter. That's what are customers are best at.

- Dov

[_Raphael_Freeman_]

>Shva na follows a simple rule that no one debate. Farkash is working on making the entire Tanach with shva nas.

er, no. There are different opinions about this. We're Jewish after all. Eg yevarechecha or yevarechcha.

>Now regarding komatz katan according to various views, this is no problem in software; only in print form.

yes it is. Is the first kamatz in tzohorayim a kamatz katan or a kamatz gadol According to sefardim it's a kamatz katan and ashkenazim say it's a kamatz gadol.

>How do you pay the team, by the hour?
off topic.

[_Raphael_Freeman_]

>The purpose of thickness is to draw attention that the thicker one is greater than the thinner. I think this is a wrong message to send. One is not more important than the other. Distinguish between them simply by color.

I guess that is an approach, but it's expensive to print in more than one colour. BTW if you want to quote me use the '>' before my text and it will indent.

[_Raphael_Freeman_]

>Even Pierre, President and CEO of WinSoft in France, who made Adobe InDesign ME, said that Adobe should make a meaningful good will gesture and help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books using Adobe's software and the exact replica of the original Vilna typeface to show the entire world that the Jewish Bible and Talmud can be perfectly recreated and printed, and made also into searchable PDF. Furthermore, he said he'd tell Mr. John Warnock, now the Chairman of Adobe directly to his face.
>Now, Raphael, isn't that the way it should be?

I think that now you can typeset all these holy books in InDesign. We are retypesetting the Koren Tanakh in InDesign with the help of Harbs add in scripts. Winsoft has done great work.

[_Raphael_Freeman_]

>But what I don't understand is why Adobe, a public nonsectarian company, should somehow as a "meaningful goodwill gesture ... help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books suing Adobe's software." This would put Adobe in direct competition with some of its customers who do this for a living. Plus, we have a hard enough time just getting enough resources to get our software developed, tested, debugged, and supported. (Maybe someday we'll actually be able to integrate InDesign ME's support of R-to-L languages into the mainline InDesign code and not have to have a separate edition whenever you want to use Ivrit for even part of a document!) And if we did all the classic Jewish holy books, why shouldn't be also do those for the Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, etc.? This really isn't Adobe's current business nor a business that we want to enter. That's what are customers are best at.

Dov of course (as always) is correct.

I personally would love it if the regular InDesign incorporated ME.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

But what I don't understand is why Adobe, a public nonsectarian company, should somehow as a "meaningful goodwill gesture ... help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books suing Adobe's software." This would put Adobe in direct competition with some of its customers who do this for a living. Plus, we have a hard enough time just getting enough resources to get our software developed, tested, debugged, and supported. (Maybe someday we'll actually be able to integrate InDesign ME's support of R-to-L languages into the mainline InDesign code and not have to have a separate edition whenever you want to use Ivrit for even part of a document!) And if we did all the classic Jewish holy books, why shouldn't be also do those for the Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, etc.? This really isn't Adobe's current business nor a business that we want to enter. That's what are customers are best at.

Dov, before you jump to conclusions, allow me answer your every point well taken. After you acknowledge the conclusions, can you use your influence with Mr. Warnock?

[_Irwin_Scott_]

the regular InDesign incorporated ME

a technician's fantasy only, but a very poor marketing decision, as is obvious to a knowledgeable business person.

btw, dov is a brilliantv person, but his logic in his arguments is weak. stay tuned for answers to his questions, one by one.

if afterward everybody would agree but Dov, it would look poorly on him, as his emotions ruled over better judgement. however, i believe it won't be the case.

[Neil_Keller]

Irwin,

Please step back for a moment and look at Dov's post from a purely business standpoint. Dov is correct. As nice as it might be for Adobe to provide the resources, it is simply not Adobe's place in the market, and it would compete directly with some of its customers.

Neil

[_Irwin_Scott_]

> But what I don't understand is why Adobe, a public nonsectarian company, should somehow as a "meaningful goodwill gesture ... help sponsor the creation of all these classic holy books using Adobe's software."

The end result would be a tangible testimony that the Adobe graphic art software accomplish a massive task of historical proportions. The Talmud is the most massive set of knowledge books, representing much of the body of Jewish wisdom that was ever created, containing more material than even Encyclopedia Britanica. According to Jewish tradition it is the Bible explained and a whole lot more.

>This would put Adobe in direct competition with some of its customers who do this for a living.

Nobody is currently using Adobe software to create a new edition of the Talmud. So, it is not harming any customers.

>Plus, we have a hard enough time just getting enough resources to get our software developed, tested, debugged, and supported.

This is a very poor explanation which degrades Adobe's own markleting literature.

(Maybe someday we'll actually be able to integrate InDesign ME's support of R-to-L languages into the mainline InDesign code and not have to have a separate edition whenever you want to use Ivrit for even part of a document!)

This is counter to any marketing sense, as no one would purchase an extra copy of the stand InDesign, but reduce to zero InDesign ME sales.

>And if we did all the classic Jewish holy books, why shouldn't be also do those for the Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, etc.? This really isn't Adobe's current business nor a business that we want to enter. That's what are customers are best at.

Not correct. First, there are different versions of accepted Koran text. Its size is not massive. Adil Awalli of Ready Set Go in London has a superior product for the Koran that makes InDesign look inferior.

Similarly, the Bible is a fraction in size of the Talmud, even including Hebrew Tanach, which Adobe customers are doing.

Therefore, only the Talmud is the choice subject for all different reasons.

[_Irwin_Scott_]

> Irwin,

Please step back for a moment and look at Dov's post from a purely business standpoint. Dov is correct. As nice as it might be for Adobe to provide the resources, it is simply not Adobe's place in the market, and it would compete directly with some of its customers.

Neil,

I humbly disagree with Dov's reasoning, with all due respect.

No customer would be harmed financially if Adobe created the Adobe Edition of the Talmud. On the contrary, the various editions of the Talmud are being poorly created using non-Adobe dedicated custom software. This infers that InDesign is not capable of doing this massive historic project.

[_Raphael_Freeman_]

> Nobody is currently using Adobe software to create a new edition of the Talmud. So, it is not harming any customers.

Who says? I'm not in a position to disclose more information, but I can say for a fact that this statement is not true.