how can i do typing Biblical Hebrew with vowel in Pages?

vinh t. k. nguyen wrote:

It's easy to type modern Hebrew but unnormal to type Biblical Hebrew with vowel in Pages.

I am using a Mac pro and an Ipad.

There is no problem on a Mac Pro, the vowels are obtained by using the option/alt key on the Hebrew qwerty keyboard layout. Use Keyboard Viewer to see which key does what. Let us know if you have further questions.

On an iPad you would have to find a keyboard app and do things via copy/paste. Search the app store for "hebrew". Unicode Pad and UniKey have kinds of cutomizable keyboards. Also check the Keyman app.

Jowie wrote:

When I type vowels, they appear to the side of the consonants rather than underneath them. How can I type the vowels so they appear under the consonants?

Are you typing the vowel after the consonant? What font are you using?

Are you using Pages 5 or Pages 4 (09).

That's the answer I was looking for thanks! I was typing the vowel as a modifier before the consonant, like you do with accents on the Latin character sets. Typing it after the consonant works.

Sorted now, thanks!

Most of the time the Hebrew keyboard is very intuitive, especially with the keyboard viewer on for when you're typing vowels. However, there's a few things that are difficult (probably because they provide no explanation.)

For example right now I'm trying to type vav + holam for b'mitzvotav (holam should appear to the left of my vav.) No matter what I do, it appears on top of the vav like so: וֹ. I can make the holam appear before the vav when writing, but not after the vav.

I'm sure there's a directional thing I'm missing, but no Hebrew keyboard tutorial I've found has explained this. As though, if I knew how to type holam, the rest of my issues would disappear. If someone knows an exhaustive resource for how to direct nikkud when typing in Hebrew, I'd be much obliged. I'm surprised there's an obvious לֹ since it seems you could type lamed + (alt+vav) to get it, but there's no obvious way to type vav with a holam to its left, which is part of how you spell b'mitzvotav, a very common phrase.)

(Another issue I have is that when I try to write a hiriq under yud, it appears directly under the yud, instead of at the bottom with most other nikkud. Which makes it look like a dagesh.)

I've been wondering if the problem is I'm using the modern, not Biblical, Hebrew keyboard, but I doubt this combination of consonants + nikkud is non-existent in Modern Hebrew.

PS I finally found an explanation of the issue

http://www.gentlewisdom.org/qaya/academic/hebrew/Holam.html

I Think it's a question of finding a font that supports the version you need

or use this diacritic

http://www.decodeunicode.org/U+05BA

When I type vowels, they appear to the side of the consonants rather than underneath them. How can I type the vowels so they appear under the consonants?

CCould you post a screenshot of that word where the Holam is not above the vav? All the examples I find have it right over, not to the left.