How to display Hebrew text

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Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

How to display Hebrew text

I am listening to a Rabbi talking about Torah. On his website, he has available PPT presentations that follow the discussion. They are (presumably) in Hebrew. When I download them, there's just a bunch of "NLT KCUO JJHFUO."

I have activated a Hebrew keyboard, and added a Hebrew Font (New Peninem MT) though if I convert the text in the Keynote slide to the new font, it doesn't automatically convert. I have to duplicate the slide, delete the text, then transcribe the original -- typing a bunch of nonsense BACKWARDS -- in order to make the presentation look like what it's supposed to be.

There MUST be a proper way to do this, but I haven't figured it out. What shall I do?

thank you

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.5

Posted on Dec 19, 2023 11:46 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 21, 2023 2:46 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Dec 19, 2023 1:54 PM in response to Sewell1911

Try downloading/installing the Drogulin font from someplace, ideally the same site you are looking at, and then switching to that font in PPT.

It definitely looks like the slide is using a legacy font which puts Hebrew chracters at Latin codepoints. These are normally no longer provided on computers, so only latin gets displayed, but some bible study courses still use them and provide them to students.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Dec 19, 2023 8:36 PM in response to Sewell1911

Sewell1911 wrote:

I suspect that there is a process that I am missing that converts the Latin alphabet into the Hebrew alphabet as typed.

i.e. -- lkjh = ךלחי

One way to type latin and get hebrew like that is to use a legacy ascii Hebrew font, for example BST Hebrew

https://spiritandtruth.org/fonts/

You might try that one, but I doubt it is correct for that text.

Is there any way to ask the people who produced the text what they used?

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Dec 19, 2023 1:13 PM in response to Sewell1911

It sounds like the author used an old non-unicode system to compose the hebrew. You would probably need to download and install the legacy font he usec to get correct displsy, if you provide a url i can have a look and give better advice.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Dec 20, 2023 10:16 AM in response to Sewell1911

Thanks! The more I look at this, the more mystified I become. The latin text is basically a typing instruction, backwards, diacritics omitted, of the keys you press on an English keyboard when the keyboard layout is set to Hebrew. I don't know how that page could have been generated, but am really curious about it if you find out from the people running the site.

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Answer 6

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 21, 2023 10:10 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Interesting -- I clicked that link this morning and added that font to my FontBook. It converted the "Drogulin" beautifully! However, not accurately! What the...??? I had to look up qbible.com to compare. It's not right.

When I applied it to the "JCL Sefer," it also converted it, but included œ, %, and other random symbols.

I'm beginning to wonder if the only solution to this is to get AlephBeta to update the fonts they use.

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Answer 7

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Jan 3, 2024 12:25 PM in response to Sewell1911

Sewell1911 wrote:

two of them were displaying incorrectly -- one in Latin alphabet, and one in wingdings -- in the PDF!! This is nuts.

That could mean they botched the pdf creation for those two, forgetting to embed the right fonts. But also try reading them with Acrobat Reader, just in case the Apple Preview app is not working right with them.

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,210 points

Dec 21, 2023 10:31 AM in response to Sewell1911

I'd be interested if you could post a screen shot of how it displays with Drogulin.

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Answer 9

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 19, 2023 1:26 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks. Here's the site: https://alephbeta.org/playlist/abrahams-journey

It's a subscription service, so the notes and presentations are behind the paywall.

Otherwise, this is what I get when I download a presentation. So far, nothing I have tried converts the characters - short of re-entering them as I described.

I'm not sure what else I can include/attach here that would help.

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Answer 10

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 19, 2023 7:16 PM in response to Sewell1911

Tom Gewecke tried to help, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, I don't think I progressed along my journey. In the process, I downloaded 4 Hebraic fonts that are very nice. I never found the "Drogulin" font, but my suspicion is that there is another step that I am missing. Several of the fonts I found have both Hebrew and Latin script. I suspect that there is a process that I am missing that converts the Latin alphabet into the Hebrew alphabet as typed.

i.e. -- lkjh = ךלחי

Somehow, there is probably a way to easily do this that I am missing.

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Answer 11

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 20, 2023 10:29 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yeah. So far, the only suggestion was to use Chrome browser (I use Brave). Chrome didn't make a difference. The really discouraging part is that a later presentation I downloaded was in a different font (JCL Sefer Trop) that shows up as a bunch of symbols that are usually like SHIFT-OPTION-R type stuff. Maybe those are the diacritics. There's no way I'd have the time or patience to retype this one.

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Answer 12

Sewell1911 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 3, 2024 12:01 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Back on 12/21, I left a message requesting AlephBeta either re-post in a newer font or post links to download the fonts they use.

I received a message yesterday that they had put up PDFs of the presentations. That is a great compromise, and I was able to download 7 (3 or 4 of which have Hebrew passages). However, two of them were displaying incorrectly -- one in Latin alphabet, and one in wingdings -- in the PDF!! This is nuts.

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