SIL Hebrew Font System                        Dec. 19, 1997
Release Notes
____________________________________________________________
Mac Version 1.0
Windows Version 1.0


General Statement

This software is being made available at no charge to the public as a courtesy.
It is not a trivial matter to install and use. It is recommended for those
already familiar with using a non-roman language on their computer, those
familiar with Hebrew, and those who have used keyboarding programs previously.

These fonts have been successfully tested on Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Mac
OS 7.5.3 and OS 8.0, Microsoft Word 6.0 and Word 7. They are not fully functional 
in Windows 97 or Word 97. 

The encoding was chosen to meet certain needs within the SIL organization.  It
is not compatible with any known encoding or body of text, other than that of
Translator's Workplace. Because of this, or because of the complexity of
installation and use, it may not be suitable for your use.

There is not enough space in a standard TrueType font to handle all possible
combinations of consonants, vowels, and cantillation marks, given the approach
we have taken. Therefore, you may notice that the placement of certain
characters on the page is not the preferred. You will get the best results only
from the Macintosh GX version of the fonts.

Due to the space limitation discussed above, the following features are not
fully functional.

1. Vowel and cantillation combinations with qoph may collide or overstrike the
qoph "tail".

2. Full spelling of vowels.  Full spelling vowels, such as kamets-he and
hireq-yod, are not retained in the Display Encoding. They are only available in
the Standard Encoding (Full). We don't expect this to be a problem, since text
in the Standard Encoding is intended for storage and analysis, not display.

3. Defective hireq.  A hireq preceding a word-final mem may sometimes fall to
the left, under the mem, such as in the word "Jerusalem". This is not
supported.


Other Facts

1. Shewa and silent shewa. Kamets and kamets-o. To retain the
difference between the two shewas and the two kametses, they must be keyed as
two distinct characters. They will look identical in Ezra, but will be
different in the transliteration.

2. The keyboard charts indicate the characters $, ^, and +. These keys are only
valid when used in combination with other characters.  They have no function
when typed in isolation.

3. The keyboard charts indicate a character called ZWL (zero width letter).
This is a character made available for certain uses in publishing, such as for
preventing final forms of the consonants from appearing. Another character is
the non-breaking space.  If your application supports it, you may find it
useful. It is not on the keyboard chart, but can be found at location 176
(Alt-0176) or Opt-5.

4. Weak aleph. A holem preceding an aleph which has no vowel would normally
display over the right side of the aleph. The Ezra-DE keyboard for Mac does not 
handle this automatically. The Ezra-DE keyboard for PC handles it for most
situations. If needed, turn off the keyboard and type the holem as Alt-0215 or
Shift-Opt-v. Then turn the keyboard back on.

5. If you find that some vowels and low cants are "touching", you may wish to
move a character slightly left.  This can be done by inserting one or more
thinspaces (Alt-space on the Ezra-DE keyboard) before it. Note that thinspaces
are not retained when converting (using CC) to the Standard Encoding.

6. In the standard encoding keyboards, a single '=' will give a dagesh (dot).
To type a stand-alone dagesh when using a display keyboard, type '=' '='. This
is intentional, but not documented on the chart.

7. The CC table DE2SE will automatically change some shewas to silent shewa and
leave others as the spoken shewa, even if the original text only had the spoken
shewa, or a combination of the two.

8.  The CC table SE2TR has errors, particularly in regard to begad-kepat doubling. 
We hope to correct these at a later date.

Mac version:

Known Incompatibilities

1. SILKey and BBEdit Lite 3.5: Certain key combinations require replacing
letters on the display. In BBEdit, too many letters will be removed.

2. Ezra fonts and SoftWindows 2: We were not able to get SoftWindows to
correctly display the overstriking characters in the Ezra fonts. Once a single
overstrike had been typed, no more letters would appear until a carriage return
was typed.

3. PageMaker 5.0 and SIL Heb Trans fonts: PageMaker 5 seems unable at times to
locate individual fonts when they are placed in families.

4. PageMaker and Quickdraw GX are incompatible, therefore PageMaker is incompatible 
with the GX versions of the fonts.

5. Certain key combinations cannot be blocked in Microsoft Word 6.0 for Mac.
Using any keystroke not documented may result in illegal characters being
displayed or other undefined action by Word 6.  Known problem combinations are
Alt-n and Alt-m.

PC version:

Known Incompatibilities

1. Overstriking characters such as vowels and cantillation marks will not
display  using certain display drivers.  If you experience difficulty, try installing 
the standard Microsoft video driver for your display.

2. Certain key combinations cannot be blocked in Microsoft Word 6.0 for
Windows. Using any keystroke not documented may result in illegal characters
being displayed or other undefined action by Word 6.  Known problem
combinations are Alt-2 and Alt-m.

3. When using Microsoft Word 6.0 for Windows with the transliteration
keyboards, typing an 'i' followed by a space will cause the 'i' to disappear.

4. If you use "Insert Symbol" in Microsoft Word, and then use the "Reverse" macro 
to reverse the text, all inserted characters will turn into parentheses. Using the 
provided keyboard will avoid this problem.

5. The Ezra font is a symbol font, not UGL-encoded. Therefore, characters in the 
upper ASCII will convert to question marks when imported into Word 97. 


