The Hebrew HOWTO Maintained by Yair G. Rajwan, yair@hobbes.jct.ac.il v0.4, 12 September 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This `Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ) / HOWTO document describes how to configure your Linux machine to use Hebrew characters on X-Windows and Virtual Consoles. The most up-to-date version of the Hebrew-HOWTO may be obtained from my_Web_page or from ftp://hobbes.jct.ac.il. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction Any language setup, other than the original American English, has two issues: 1. Displaying the right characters (fonts) - for Hebrew it's ISO-8859- 8 standard. 2. Mapping the keyboard. There is much more to Hebrew than that (like right to left, geometry in X- Windows,etc), but this HOWTO (at least for the first draft) deals only with the basic issues. More information can be found in the various "national" HOWTOs (German, Danish, etc.) and in the ISO 8859-1 HOWTO (ftp://ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at/pub/ 8bit FAQ-ISO-8859-1). 1.1 Changes. * FIRST DRAFT to 0.2. Most of this file is taken from the first draft by Vlad Moseanu. * 0.2 to 0.3Beta. Added excerpts from documents from the archive e-brew.zip from ftp:// ftp.jer1.co.il/pub/software/msdos/communication, and some bug fixes with the help of JCT Linux-il group members. * 0.3Beta to 0.4. After the first release of the Hebrew-HOWTO to the Linux-il it contain all the E-mail send to me regarding spelling/grammer and Tex-Xet, Mule and Vim info. 1.2 Thanks This HOWTO prepared by the help of all the group: Linux-il - 'The Israeli Linux users group' and especially by: The Linux-il group (Linux-il@hagiga.jct.ac.il) Vlad Moseanu (vlad@actcom.co.il) Gili Granot (gil@csc.cs.technion.ac.il) Harvey J. Stein (hjstein@math.huji.ac.il) Dovie Adler (dadler@hobbes.jct.ac.il) Gavrie Philipson (gavrie@shekel.jct.ac.il) 2. Standards for representation of Hebrew characters 2.1 ASCII To make one thing clear, for once and forever: There is no such thing as 8-bit ASCII. ASCII is only 7 bits. Any 8-bit code is not ASCII, but that doesn't mean it's not standard. ISO-8859-8 is standard, but not ASCII. Thanks! 2.2 DOS Hebrew The Hebrew encoding starts at 128d for Aleph. Therefore, encoding requires 8 bits. This is what you have on the Video card EPROM hardware fonts, all of the Hebrew DOS based editors use this table (Qtext, HED, etc.). 2.3 ISO Hebrew The Hebrew encoding starts at 224 for Aleph. This is the Internet standard, international standard and basically the standard for Ms-Windows and for Macintoshes (Dagesh, etc...). 2.4 OLD PC Hebrew This is 7-bit, and obsolete, as it occupies essentially the same ASCII range as English lowercase letters. So, it is best avoided. However, when ISO Hebrew gets its eighth bit stripped off by some ignorant Unix mail program (so you get a jumble of English letters for the Hebrew part of your message and the regular English, reversed or not, mixed in), you will get this, and will need to transform it to PC or ISO. If there was English mixed in with the Hebrew, this will be a sad situation, as you will either get Hebrew plus jumble, or English plus jumble... 2.5 Conversions Here are some simple scripts to convert from each standard to the other: DOS - ISO: tr '\200-\232' '\340-\372' < {dos_file} > {iso_file} ISO - DOS: tr '\340-\372' '\200-\232' < {iso_file} > {dos_file} OLD - DOS: tr -z '\200-\232' < {old_Hebrew_file} > {dos_file} NOTE: The numbers use by tr are in octal! 3. Virtual Consoles (VCs) Every distribution of Slackware comes with kbd; the package is called keytbls under Slackware (a4 in 2.3.0 - kbd 0.90). Joel Hoffman has contributed Hebrew fonts and keymaps from his original codepage.tar.Z file. Look under /usr/lib/ kbd for iso08.* files. It follows ISO 8859-8 and the Hebrew keytables and maps. Put the following lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local: ----- #!/bin/sh # Put any local setup commands in here # INITTY=/dev/tty[1-6] PATH=/sbin:/etc:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin # # kbd - Set the console font and keyboard # set numlock and set metabit mode on tty1 .. tty8 for tty in $INITTY do # setleds -D +num < $tty > /dev/null setmetamode metabit < $tty > /dev/null done # Latin8(Hebrew) keyboard/console setfont iso08.f16 mapscrn trivial loadkeys Hebrew # enable mapping for tty in $INITTY do echo -n -e "\\033(K" >$tty done ----- NOTE: If you are using X Windows be careful with "setleds", it may hang the X server. The above setup works fine with the Hebrew version of pico (pine) and displays correctly ISO 8859-8 Hebrew (X Windows, MS Windows). 4. X Windows setup - XFree86 3.1 4.1 Hebrew fonts. XFree86 3.1 comes with two Hebrew fonts: heb6x13, heb8x13. Additional Hebrew fonts can be found on the Net: * The web Type1 fonts (Helvetica/David style (proportional) and Courier/Shalom Stick style (fixed space) ) from the snunit-project archive at ftp:// snunit.huji.ac.il/pub/fonts/, it's good for netscape Hebrew pages. * Avner Lottem, ( lottem@techUnix.technion.ac.il) put some Hebrew-ISO 8859- 8 fonts on archive at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts/hebxfonts- 0.1.tgz, it has a font that's good for dosemu under X-Windows (read his README file). 4.2 Installing fonts * Fonts exaptable: pcf (Portable Compiled Format), bdf (Bitmap Distribution Format), pfb (Type1 fonts). * Move the fonts to some existing directory (/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc) or create a new one (/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Hebrew). compress (to *.Z) the fonts to save space (NOT GZIP!!!). * Run the mkfontdir to create/re-create the fonts.dir and edit fonts.alias (optional) to define new aliases. * For Type1 fonts, mkfontdir does nothing. You have to add these fonts to fonts.dir manually. * Make sure that the directory is in the X server path. Edit the XF86Config and add the appropriate path -- FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/...". 4.3 Making an X application to use Hebrew fonts. In short you need to set the appropriate resource. Xterm Put the following line in the $HOME/.Xresources: xterm*font: heb8x13 or simply start xterm with xterm -fn heb8x13 The above font is way too small, so search for a better one ... See the comments/examples on starting X11. Netscape Usaly you can use the hebrew fonts from snunit_-_webfonts, Install it as described, and then put the next defaults in your local .Xdefaults or in the app-defaults/Netscape. ---- *documentFonts.latin1.variable.italic*slant: r *documentFonts.latin1.variable.boldItalic*slant: r *documentFonts.latin1.variable*family: web *documentFonts.latin1.fixed*family: webmono *documentFonts.latin1*registry: iso8859 *documentFonts.latin1*encoding: 8 ---- In general you can put any fonts insted of the webfonts files as long as its supported by X11 as_described. 4.4 Mapping the keyboard. For some reason the X server doesn't inherit the keymap from the previous paragraph, and anyway I would like to define ALT Left and ALT Right and Scroll Lock. When pressing ALT together with some key it will generate a Hebrew character, Scroll Lock will lock in Hebrew mode. To do that we need to use xmodmap. Following is a Xmodmap which also corrects the bugs with the "Num Lock": ----- ! Hebrew key mapping for XFree86 (for US/Hebrew keyboards). ! By Vlad Moseanu ! keysym Alt_L = Mode_switch keysym Alt_R = Mode_switch !clear Mod1 clear Mod2 !add Mod1 = Alt_L add Mod2 = Mode_switch ! ! Set the mapping for each key ! keycode 8 = keycode 9 = Escape keycode 10 = 1 exclam keycode 11 = 2 at keycode 12 = 3 numbersign keycode 13 = 4 dollar keycode 14 = 5 percent keycode 15 = 6 asciicircum keycode 16 = 7 ampersand keycode 17 = 8 asterisk keycode 18 = 9 parenleft keycode 19 = 0 parenright keycode 20 = minus underscore keycode 21 = equal plus keycode 22 = Delete keycode 23 = Tab keycode 24 = q Q slash Q keycode 25 = w W apostrophe W keycode 26 = e E 0x00f7 E keycode 27 = r R 0x00f8 R keycode 28 = t T 0x00e0 T keycode 29 = y Y 0x00e8 Y keycode 30 = u U 0x00e5 U keycode 31 = i I 0x00ef I keycode 32 = o O 0x00ed O keycode 33 = p P 0x00f4 P keycode 34 = bracketleft braceleft keycode 35 = bracketright braceright keycode 36 = Return keycode 37 = Control_L keycode 38 = a A 0x00f9 A keycode 39 = s S 0x00e3 S keycode 40 = d D 0x00e2 D keycode 41 = f F 0x00eb F keycode 42 = g G 0x00f2 G keycode 43 = h H 0x00e9 H keycode 44 = j J 0x00e7 J keycode 45 = k K 0x00ec K keycode 46 = l L 0x00ea L keycode 47 = semicolon colon 0x00f3 colon keycode 48 = apostrophe quotedbl comma quotedbl keycode 49 = grave asciitilde semicolon asciitilde keycode 50 = Shift_L keycode 51 = backslash bar keycode 52 = z Z 0x00e6 Z keycode 53 = x X 0x00f1 X keycode 54 = c C 0x00e1 C keycode 55 = v V 0x00e4 V keycode 56 = b B 0x00f0 B keycode 57 = n N 0x00ee N keycode 58 = m M 0x00f6 M keycode 59 = comma less 0x00fa less keycode 60 = period greater 0x00f5 greater keycode 61 = slash question period question keycode 62 = Shift_R keycode 63 = KP_Multiply !keycode 64 = Alt_L Meta_L keycode 65 = space keycode 66 = Caps_Lock keycode 67 = F1 keycode 68 = F2 keycode 69 = F3 keycode 70 = F4 keycode 71 = F5 keycode 72 = F6 keycode 73 = F7 keycode 74 = F8 keycode 75 = Escape keycode 76 = F10 keycode 77 = Num_Lock keycode 78 = Scroll_Lock keycode 79 = KP_7 keycode 80 = KP_8 keycode 81 = KP_9 keycode 82 = KP_Subtract keycode 83 = KP_4 keycode 84 = KP_5 keycode 85 = KP_6 keycode 86 = KP_Add keycode 87 = KP_1 keycode 88 = KP_2 keycode 89 = KP_3 keycode 90 = KP_0 keycode 91 = KP_Decimal keycode 92 = Sys_Req keycode 93 = keycode 94 = keycode 95 = F11 keycode 96 = F12 keycode 97 = Home keycode 98 = Up keycode 99 = Prior keycode 100 = Left keycode 101 = Begin keycode 102 = Right keycode 103 = End keycode 104 = Down keycode 105 = Next keycode 106 = Insert keycode 107 = Delete keycode 108 = KP_Enter keycode 109 = Control_R keycode 110 = Pause keycode 111 = Print keycode 112 = KP_Divide !keycode 113 = Alt_R Meta_R keycode 114 = Break ! ! This xmodmap file can be use to set the correct numerical keypad mapping ! when "ServerNumLock" is set in the XF86Config file. In this case the ! Xserver takes care of the Num Lock processing. ! ! keycode 136 = KP_7 keycode 137 = KP_8 keycode 138 = KP_9 keycode 139 = KP_4 keycode 140 = KP_5 keycode 141 = KP_6 keycode 142 = KP_1 keycode 143 = KP_2 keycode 144 = KP_3 keycode 145 = KP_0 keycode 146 = KP_Decimal keycode 147 = Home keycode 148 = Up keycode 149 = Prior keycode 150 = Left keycode 151 = Begin keycode 152 = Right keycode 153 = End keycode 154 = Down keycode 155 = Next keycode 156 = Insert keycode 157 = Delete ----- To use the Xmodmap above define "Scroll-Lock Mode-Lock" in the XF86Config. 4.5 Integrating all the above, examples. If you are using xdm a $HOME/.xsession should look like the following: ----- #!/bin/sh # $XConsortium: Xsession,v 1.9 92/08/29 16:24:57 gildea Exp $ # # General defs # export OPENWINHOME=/usr/openwin export MANPATH=/usr/local/man:/usr/man/preformat:/usr/man:/usr/ X11R6/man #export HOSTNAME="`cat /etc/HOSTNAME`" export PATH="/bin: /usr/bin: /usr/X11/bin: /usr/X386/bin: /usr/TeX/ bini: /usr/local/bin: /usr/games:." LESS=-MM if [ -z $XAPPLRESDIR ]; then XAPPLRESDIR=/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults:/usr/local/lib/X11/ app-defaults else XAPPLRESDIR=$XAPPLRESDIR:/usr/lib/X11/app-defaults fi export XAPPLRESDIR # sysresources=/usr/lib/X11/Xresources sysmodmap=/usr/lib/X11/Xmodmap resources=$HOME/.Xresources xmodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap if [ -f $sysresources ]; then xrdb -merge $sysresources fi if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then xmodmap $sysmodmap fi if [ -f $resources ]; then xrdb -merge $resources fi if [ -f $xmodmap ]; then xmodmap $xmodmap fi # # Start applications # # xterm -ls -sb & xhost + # look out !!! exec fvwm ----- If you prefer startx use the above as an example for .xinitrc. 5. Shells setup. For more details read the ISO_8859-1 HOWTO. 5.1 bash Create a $HOME/.inputrc contain the following: ----- set meta-flag On set convert-meta Off set output-meta On ----- 5.2 tcsh Define the following in the $HOME/.login or /etc/csh.login: setenv LANG iw_IL.ISO8859-8 (or iw_IL) Actually because the binary version of tcsh is complied without nls the LANG can be set to anything and it will still work (no need for /usr/lib/nls...). The lang. name also shows my Digital bias ... 6. Applications 6.1 Vim * The Vim is a Vi IMproved editor with some enhanced commands and the hebrew support was made bu Dov Grobgeld (HED developer). * Another Vim patch announced by Avner Lottem, lottem@techunix.technion.ac.il and can be obtained from ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/editors/vi/ vim3.0-rlh0.1.tgz. * For more info, you can look at http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gil/var.html 6.2 Hebrew pine and pico The pine and it's additional editor pico had been changed by Helen Zommer from CC-huji and has a bug-report mail: pineh-bug@horizon.cc.huji.ac.il. It can be down-loaded from ftp://horizon.cc.huji.ac.il/pub. 6.3 Some emacs Hebrew ports. * Hebrew package by Joseph Friedman. It includes some Hebrew fonts in BDF format, patch for emacs 18.58 and an elisp package. It is fine, but nobody uses emacs 18.* anymore. It can be obtained from: ftp://archive.cis.ohio- state.edu/pub/gnu/emacs/elisp-archive/misc/Hebrew.tar.Z. * A very simple Hebrew package. Includes only right-to-left cursor movement support and right-to-left sorting. Works without any patches with FSF emacs 19. Can be obtained from ftp://archive.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/gnu/emacs/ elisp-archive/misc/Hebrew.el.Z. * One of emacs branches - MULE (Multi Lingual Emacs) Supports a lot of languages including Hebrew. It compiles and runs under Linux with no problem. It is full Emacs, with Hebrew support and double-direction handling. It can be obtained from: ftp://kelim.jct.ac.il/pub/Hebrew 6.4 Dosemu For a VC dosemu you can use your Hebrew from the Video card EPROM, and if you don't have it there are plenty of Hebrew dos fonts from EGA support to the VGA Hebrew support. For X-Windows support you should download the file: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/ Linux/X11/fonts/hebxfonts-0.1.tgz it's contain some fonts include one called vgah.pcf that you should install it on your fonts directory as describe above the fonts are: 6.5 XHTerm There is a main port of the regular X-Term program for use with a Hebrew fonts - XHTerm = xterm + Hebrew support. The port for a sun machine was made avalible by the help of Danny danny@cs.huji.ac.il. Evgeny has some patch for use this port under Linux. His version should come with a pre-compiled XHTerm for both X11R5 and X11R6. You should use xhterm with the option -fn and a Hebrew font as_described! Danny's port (for SUN) can be obtained from: ftp:// ftp.huji.ac.il/pub/local/xhterm and the patched version of Evgeny Stambulchik is on: ftp://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/pub/software/linux Get it from there and you'll get 5 fonts_with_it: [heb10x20.pcf, heb6x13.bdf, heb6x13.pcf, heb8x13.bdf, heb8x13.pcf] 6.6 TeX--XeT - Hebrew Tex. The bigest problem with Tex with Hebrew is that the charecters should go backwards relative to Visual look (i.e. pico inserts the charecters from right to left), so the best thing is to get XHterm with a regular emacs and write the Hebrew left to right, backwards as well. The newer NTeX distribution on sunsite (v1.5) includes everything, including TeX--XeT, precompiled for Linux. It can be obtained from ftp:// sunsite.unc.edu.gz/pub/Linux/apps/tex/ntex. An older version of TeX--XeT can be obtained from ftp://noa.huji.ac.il/tex. This older version, however, has to be recompiled (not recommended). These TeX distributions are fine if you use LaTeX2.09. If you want to use LaTeX2e (the current de facto standard) you have a problem. Alon Ziv (alonz@csa.cs.technion.ac.il) is currently working in support for LaTeX2e with Hebrew, using the Babel languages system. I don't know the current status of his work -- ask him! 7. Printer setup Mainly there is not to say, if you have a regular ASCII line printer (who does, these days?) there is a good chance that there are Hebrew fonts in it on the EPROM chip. If you use PostScript, you should download soft fonts to the printer (you can always use the earlier_mentioned Web fonts for that. These fonts are also useable with Ghostscript). If you have a PCL printer (LaserJet etc.), you can either use font cartridges or use Ghostscript. 8. Commercial products. 8.1 El-Mar software. The Hebrew Support for X-Windows & Motif, is a product of El-Mar Software, which adds Hebrew functionality to many of the parts and layers of X-Windows and Motif, including Xlib, all of the widgets of Motif, hterm (Hebrew xterm), demos and simple useful applications (e.g. bi-lingual Motif-based editor), fonts (including scalable Type1), keyboard-manager in order to allow Hebrew and push-mode for non-Motif applications, etc. Despite allowing many new features and variations for Motif widgets, the support doesn't have any modification to internal data-structures of Motif, so existing applications which were compiled and linked under non-Hebrew environment and libraries, can be relinked (without compilation!) and run with Hebrew (you can replace shared-libraries, so even the relink is not needed!) By using another tool of us, Motif/Xplorer, you can take commercial applications (without their source) and translate them to Hebrew. This was the way of giving Hebrew support for Oracle Forms 4, Intellicorp's Kappa and OMW, CA-Unicenter, and many other leading UNIX tools sold in Israel. This product was purchased and adopted by most of the workstation vendors (9 of them, including the biggest: Sun, HP, SGI), and many other software houses. There are Makefiles for more than 30 platforms and operating systems. We believe only in open software, so all the customers get the compelete source code. We have good relations with the leading forces in this industry, including the technical staff of X-Consortium and the technical staff of COSE. Eli Marmor El-Mar Software Ltd. Voice: 050-237338 FAX: 09-984279 marmor@sunshine.cs.biu.ac.il P.S.: The announcement of the Arabic Support for X-Windows & Motif, is expected in January. English, Hebrew, and Arabic will be handled by 8 bits (!), including the full set of Arabic glyphes. 9. Hebrew around the Internet. 9.1 WWW * Jerusalem 1 - has many program and FAQ files about Hebrew on Unix and other platforms http://www.jer1.co.il. * Gili Granot's Hebrew archive page - sumerize of all Hebrew related issues around the Web (include all kind of files) http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gil. * Gavrie has some info about Hebrew on his ftp site: ftp://kelim.jct.ac.il 9.2 Gopher * A one word testing for Hebrew-gopher can be found on gopher:// shekel.jct.ac.il 9.3 Ftp * Some Tex-Xet programs and the main FTP site for Tex Hebrew support for PC and Unix is at ftp://noa.huji.ac.il/tex. * Horizon site as said_allready contains the main site of pine/pico Hebrew support - ftp://horizon.huji.ac.il/pub. * Gili Granot's Hebrew archive page ftp site is at ftp://ssl.cs.technion.ac.il/ pub.