This help file is organised as a set of questions and answers, in the style of a "frequently asked questions" document.
Browsers which support dynamic fonts are able to download a compressed description of the characters in a font and then use it to render portions of an HTML document marked up as requiring that font. If your browser does not support dynamic fonts (or if you have disabled this feature in your browser's preferences configuration), Hebrew letters will appear as the ASCII characters with the same codes. When you first display a document, your browser may also momentarily show the text in ASCII until the Hebrew font downloads.
To reduce the size of the documents and reduce the time required to download them, the "Cascading Style Sheet" feature is used to specify font family and size for various components of the documents. Your browser must therefore also support this facility (in fact, all browsers which include dynamic fonts also provide cascading style sheets, or at least the very conservative subset of style sheet features used by these documents). Make sure you haven't disabled Style Sheets in your browser's preferences setup.
When operating systems and Web browsers which support Unicode become widely available, all of this complexity will evaporate back into the clouds of chaos whence it originated, and there will be no difficulty whatsoever including characters from any number of different languages in a single document.
I did, however, perform a "reality check" which persuaded me that the text is, if not perfectly accurate, very close to perfection, at least for the portion I was able to verify. The test consisted of comparing the five books of the Torah with an independently-compiled Torah database which is considered accurate. That database, however, consists of just a string of letters--there are no spaces between words, punctuation marks, or final forms at the ends of words. Comparing just the letters, then, the Steve Gross Torah agreed perfectly with the other database. Erroneous word breaks, etc. may still exist, but at least the letter sequence is correct. I have, to date, located no reliable comparison document for checking the balance of the books of the Bible.
Hebrew Letter | Glyph | Transliteration | Web Hebrew |
---|---|---|---|
Alef | ) | ) | à |
Bet | B | B | á |
Gimel | G | G | â |
Dalet | D | D | ã |
He | H | H | ä |
Vav | W | W | å |
Zayin | Z | Z | æ |
Het | X | X | ç |
Tet | + | + | è |
Yod | Y | Y | é |
Final Kaf | k | k | ê |
Kaf | K | K | ë |
Lamed | L | L | ì |
Final Mem | m | m | í |
Mem | M | M | î |
Final Nun | n | n | ï |
Nun | N | N | ð |
Samekh | S | S | ñ |
Ayin | ( | ( | ò |
Final Pe | p | p | ó |
Pe | P | P | ô |
Final Tsadi | c | c | õ |
Tsadi | C | C | ö |
Qof | Q | Q | ÷ |
Resh | R | R | ø |
Sin/Shin | # | # | ù |
Sin | & | & | |
Shin | $ | $ | |
Tav | T | T | ú |
Units | Tens | Hundreds | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Name | Letter | Value | Name | Letter | Value | Name | Letter | Value |
Alef | ) | 1 | Yod | Y | 10 | Qof | Q | 100 |
Bet | B | 2 | Kaf | K | 20 | Resh | R | 200 |
Gimel | G | 3 | Lamed | L | 30 | Sin | # | 300 |
Dalet | D | 4 | Mem | M | 40 | Tav | T | 400 |
He | H | 5 | Nun | N | 50 | |||
Vav | W | 6 | Samekh | S | 60 | |||
Zayin | Z | 7 | Ayin | ( | 70 | |||
Het | X | 8 | Pe | P | 80 | |||
Tet | + | 9 | Tsadi | C | 90 |
Numbers are then written as a sequence of letters which, when their numerical values are summed, produce the required value. Letters in the sum appear in descending order of magnitude (since Hebrew is written right to left, the largest valued letter will be rightmost in a number). Note that this is not a positional number system and that there is no digit for zero. Hence, the number of letters needed to express a given quantity bears no simple relationship to its magnitude. One writes 100 as Q, 101 as )Q, 110 as YQ, and 111 as )YQ.
The numbers 15 and 16 would, if written as the sum of ten and 5 or 6, form fragments of the Divine Name. Consequently, these numbers depart from the norm and are written as the sum of nine plus 6 or 7. Thus fifteen is written as W+ and sixteen as Z+.
As a result, the dynamic font architecture implemented by Bitstream does not make portable font files directly available on the Web. Instead, fonts are compiled into "portable font resources" or ".pfr" files, which are locked to the domain name of the server which makes them available. Hence, when you downloaded the Hebrew Bible document tree, you obtained a copy of the file containing the Hebrew fonts used by the various HTML files, mcext.pfr. But browsers incorporating Bitstream dynamic font technology will only accept this file when it is downloaded from the domain for which it was created, fourmilab.ch. Even though the font upon which the file was based in in the public domain, the tool which creates the .pfr file still locks it to the site of origin.
As a result, your only option is to download a copy of the original TrueType® font, then re-make a .pfr file for your own site with one of the Web authoring tools which provide this capability: an up-to-date list can be found on the Bitstream site. The mcext.pfr file was created with the "Typograph 2.0" package from HexMac Software Systems, which is available for Windows 95 and NT, and the Macintosh, and can be used as a stand-alone font compiler without forcing you into using some horridly overcomplicated and flaky Web authoring environment.