Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

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wish2bflying
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:43 am

Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by wish2bflying »

If this is old information or just not useful to anyone, feel free to delete it!

I've been wondering for a while why my Hebrew and Greek fonts looked wrong, always very blocky, especially the Hebrew - my Aleppo looked nothing like the manuscript online.

So I started searching, and I realised the module files themselves were not specifying the fonts to use. I went into the following files and added the font= line to each:

Hebrew files:
BHS.ot
hebmodern.ont
Hebrew BHS +.ot
aleppo.ot

font=Cardo,Galatia SIL,@Arial Unicode MS,SBL Hebrew,@Code2000,@FreeSans,Ezra SIL,@FreeSerif,TITUS Cyberbit Basic,Palatino Linotype,Tahoma

Greek files:
Greek LXX and Byzantine Majority +#.ont
byz.nt
Greek TR Interlinear NT +.nt
Greek WH.nt
greek.nt
lxx.ot
tr.nt

font=Gentium,GentiumAlt,TITUS Cyberbit Basic,Vusillus,Cardo,Georgia Greek,Galatia SIL,Galilee Unicode Gk,@Code2000,Palatino Linotype,Athena Unicode,Athena

I got those font= lines from bible module files that actually displayed correctly, and the files I've listed above had NO fonts listed.

Now, the tricky part started when I had to actually find the fonts online. I'm not going to go into each one right now, but so far the only ones I still need are Vusillus, Georgia Greek, New Cardo, New Athena Unicode, but I'm at work so I can't download .zip files!

So now I have these modified files, and I've downloaded most of the fonts into my "TheWord\fonts" directory ... but it still displays @@@@@@@@@ when I try to view Hebrew on my work computer! No, I'm not an administrator, and I can't install fonts on my computer at work, so what do I do?

Well, this might have been obvious to those of you who are a bit more advanced than I am, but I found this little workaround that when you go into Control Panel - Fonts - File - Install New Font, you have an option to UN-tick "Copy fonts to Fonts folder". You can then point the installation to your fonts folder and it will create a shortcut in the Windows\Fonts directory, which you CAN do as a standard user! Hey presto, my fonts all display correctly in TheWord now!

Well, I think they display correctly - if I've done the wrong thing here, I'd be happy to be set straight! As always, caveat emptor, your mileage may vary, contents may settle in transport, etc.
csterg
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Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by csterg »

Let me say that you don't need to edit the files; you can go to File->Preferences->Bible texts and select there the font; the line in the .ont file is used as 'preferred fonts'. If theWord finds any of these fonts, it will use it, else it will use the one you have set or the default,
Costas
wish2bflying
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:43 am

Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by wish2bflying »

*sigh*

Of course, Costas always thinks ahead. Maybe I should have just asked before going off and doing all that! :roll:

Right, well, disregard my first message above, or rather, read it for an example of what NOT to do! :D
wish2bflying
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:43 am

Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by wish2bflying »

Maybe I'm doing something wrong here, but this keeps on resetting back to the default blocky font, and it also seems to ignore the "font=" line I put into the file. Looking in the config.ini, it still has the "font=Cardo" line for each of my OT modules.

*sigh*

I don't know why I'm so concerned about this, I can't even read Hebrew, but it just makes me feel better when my screen display matches my printed Interlinear at home!
csterg
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Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by csterg »

Let me explain:
the font=... property in the .ont file is a list of proposed fonts that theWord should attempt to use (in that order). The idea is this:
if a user just grabs a hebrew .ont module, it is probably that he will have at least one of these fonts on this PC. So, the list consists of a list of 'common' fonts, and each one will work. Now, if you go and set a font manually, then this list is useless from then on, since you instruct theWord to use what you want. So, this list is only good until (and if) you go and pick one yourself,
Costas
wish2bflying
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 9:43 am

Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by wish2bflying »

Okay, thanks for explaining that.

The font assignment in the Preferences keeps dropping for all my OT Hebrew modules. If I re-assign it to Cardo, it holds for maybe one or two restarts of the program then drops it again, for all the modules. This is what I meant when I said it doesn't seem to be paying attention to the font= line, it just seems to be doing its own thing.

This also applies to the Greek font modules. I tried assigning Code2000 (which is a much nicer Greek font than Palatino Linotype) to the ABP module, and it held until I closed and restarted the program.

By the way, this is running off a USB stick on a computer that doesn't have TheWord installed locally, and has the fonts "installed" on the system using the shortcut method above. I also have all the requisite fonts in the "TheWord\Fonts" directory on the USB stick.

The config.ini file is not read-only, and I can confirm this by changing tab icons and re-ordering the texts, which holds between program closing and opening, so it's clearly saving the file and reading that part of it properly.
csterg
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Re: Get Hebrew and Greek fonts to display correctly on Win PCs

Post by csterg »

This sounds like a bug; i will need to check this
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