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Text Direction This section deals with a problem in all Hebrew computer support and not only with Heblish. It is somewhat complicated. Some people may wish to skip it. Anything said below about the English language is equally applicable to other left-to-right languages.
The Problem: Text direction when combining Hebrew & English
Notice that the "!" appears to the right of שלום. This is incorrect. Since the exclamation point is part of the Hebrew quote, it should be to the left.
In addition to the direction of ambiguous letters, there is also the problem
of the direction of words:
In the above example, the same piece of text has been typed: Shin-Lamed-Vav-Mem Sofit-,-space-d-u-d-e-! But it could be displayed two ways: the first assumes it is an English sentence with an "island" of Hebrew word. The second assumes it is a Hebrew sentence with an "island" of English. How computers determine the direction of letters and words
Word Direction In Windows, you can also explicitly determine the context direction. By pressing:
In MS Excel, the context direction is determined by the first word of the cell - if it is Hebrew, the cell's context direction is right-to-left. If it is English, the direction is left-to-right.
Letter Direction
Setting Word And Letter Direction explicitlyThere are three ways to explicitly control direction of text. 1. Marks: Invisible Right-to-left or Left-to-right letters that help set letter directionTo just control letter direction, one can use marks: Marks are invisible "letters" that act as either right-to-left letters or left-to-right letters. Putting a mark next to a punctuation mark can change the direction of the punctuation. For example:
Web Heblish does not support marks. In Windows Heblish, to insert a mark:
2. Set Context directionA second method for controlling the direction of text is to change the context direction.In the following example:
To add such context direction "islands" in Windows Heblish NT+ (XP, 2000, etc.), press
When you insert an island, a placeholder text (either LToRText or RToLText)will appear. This placeholder is the island. Replace the placeholder with the text that you want to have the specified context direction. Before the placeholder there is an invisible letter which says start island and after the text, there is another invisible letter which says end island. If you want to remove the island you have to delete both these invisible letters in addition to the text. NOTE: To write over the inserted text, do NOT double-click on the word and then type. This will also select the invisible letters and write over them. You must put the cursor one side of the text and then drag it to the other. This will select only the visible letters. Then start typing. 3. Override letter directionThe last method for controlling text direction also only available in Windows NT+ Windows Heblish, is to create an island in which all letters are considered either Right-to-left or Left-to-right no matter what language they are in. For example:
The sequence of letters should be from left-to-right since they are an ordered sequence of keys rather than Hebrew text here. The above example should look like this instead:
One can insert an island of text in which all letters get a certain letter direction in Windows NT+(XP, 2000, etc.). To do so in Heblish, press:
When an island is inserted, a placeholder text (either LToRLtrs or RToLLtrs will appear. This placeholder is the island. All letters of the text which replace the placeholder will have the specified direction. Before the placeholder there is an invisible letter which says start island and after the text, there is another invisible letter which says end island. If you want to remove the island you have to delete these invisible letters in addition to the text. NOTE: To write over the inserted text, do NOT double-click on the word and then type. This will also select the invisible letters and write over them. You must put the cursor one side of the text and then drag it to the other. This will select only the visible letters. Then start typing. ** Technical note (not important for those who do not understand it) **Context Direction and Letter Direction override are features of Unicode. Marks are features of pre-Unicode. Heblish just provides a way of accessing these features. In Unicode, setting Context Direction is called "Explicit Directional Embedding" and setting Letter Direction is called "Explicit Directional Overrides". |