# Hebrew and Greek in html



## MW (Nov 18, 2013)

I am wanting to write Hebrew and Greek in Word and use the converter to html. I am wondering what the current standards are. Which fonts are best/simplest? Also, will the viewer need to download the font, or are there basic fonts which will display on every browser?


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## xirtam (Nov 18, 2013)

This is what my Hebrew teacher wrote to us:

"I had a question from a student about how to type in Hebrew on your computer. I can only tell you how Windows does it. Mac does have Hebrew right-to-left input capability, but I'm unfamiliar with how to get it working. Someone with Mac knowledge feel free to make a post if you can offer any help.

So for Windows users, first, go to the Society of Biblical Literature fonts page and download their keyboard driver (I use SIL myself, but they also have one called Tyro; they also have a Mac driver as well, so that's at least some help):
SBL Educational Resources

Install that.

Then for Windows, check under Region and Language (which you can usually find in the Control Panel) and look for anything to do with Keyboards and Languages (location may vary depending on your OS version) and you should find some settings to add new keyboard layouts. Find the option to "add" additional languages. When you select Hebrew you must also select which Keyboard you wish to use. Chose whichever one you installed (e.g. SIL) and you should be ready to go.

You can also use the SBL font, but many Unicode typefaces (which is the norm these days) already have Hebrew characters included. So for instance, if you're typing in Times New Roman and switch your keyboard to Hebrew input, you will begin typing in Hebrew. Then just switch back when you're done. There's a little bit of a learning curve to it, but not too bad.

The place to actually tell the computer you want to type in Hebrew usually shows up in your taskbar at the bottom of the screen. You can select it manually each time or go into the settings and create a keyboard shortcut.

So basically whenever you want to type in Hebrew you will have to make two changes: make sure you're using a font which has Hebrew characters (again, any Unicode font will), and make sure you've switched your keyboard input language. Then switch back when you're ready to type in English again."

Is that helpful?

In Christ,


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## MW (Nov 18, 2013)

Thankyou, Brian.

My main concern is with converting from Word to html, and what displays with different browsers. Will the process suggested by your Hebrew teacher be adapted to a variety of browsers, and will the viewers need to download the font in order to view it?


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## xirtam (Nov 18, 2013)

That is above my pay grade. Sorry.


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## Logan (Nov 18, 2013)

Rev. Winzer,

I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure that typically the user would need to have the fonts installed on their computer in order to be able to read it properly. HTML doesn't lock things into one specific font, if the font specified in your HTML isn't there, it either uses a different one or doesn't display it.

One can "embed" fonts into PDF files, or into Word documents, but those are admittedly less pleasant to browse through on a webpage. 

On the other hand, I have seen webpages (such as blueletterbible.org) display Greek fonts. That may be done with javascript though, which I don't think Word would do.


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## MW (Nov 18, 2013)

Thankyou, Logan.

I will paste from a page I visited where there is no specialised font, but presents the Hebrew in the arial font:

"בְּחֹרֵב."

The source code includes no extra tags or scripts. It appears in Hebrew characters but in the same font as the English characters.

Any ideas?


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## Afterthought (Nov 18, 2013)

armourbearer said:


> Thankyou, Logan.
> 
> I will paste from a page I visited where there is no specialised font, but presents the Hebrew in the arial font:
> 
> ...


I copied/pasted into Word then converted to HTML. It turns all of those into character references, which is expected because as far as I know, Hebrew and Greek are only supported by HTML through character references. <span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>&#1489 ;&#1468 ;&#1456 ;&#1495 ;&#1465 ;&#1512 ;&#1461 ;&#1489 ;</span>

(Note: There are no spaces before the semicolon, but whenever I remove the spaces, the board interprets them as the Hebrew characters automatically.)

Of course, those span tags aren't nice, but Microsoft Word conversions to HTML do like to use those.

Do you mean that the source code shows the Hebrew characters, even as they can be seen in this post of yours? If so, it may be that the html references are being interpreted automatically as they were in my post here. (Edit: From a little searching, if such is the case, it may be they are using UTF-8.) Would you show us the source code/website? That might be helpful.


Unicode is supported on modern browsers, but whether one needs to download an additional font as well, I am not sure. Chances are that it is unlikely with more modern computers and likely with older computers. I can say that I've never had to download extra fonts but can see Hebrew fine on websites (unless there's some small detail that gets lost that I'm unaware of from not knowing Hebrew).


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## MW (Nov 18, 2013)

Thankyou, Raymond.

Yes, the source code shows the Hebrew characters as is. This is how it appears at the Matthew Poole blog. I thought there may have been some special way of doing this, but it must only be a matter of typing out the special character in that font.


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## Afterthought (Nov 18, 2013)

armourbearer said:


> Yes, the source code shows the Hebrew characters as is. This is how it appears at the Matthew Poole blog. I thought there may have been some special way of doing this, but it must only be a matter of typing out the special character in that font.


I checked and the code indeed claims to be using UTF-8. And yes, from looking around a bit, it does seem one can just type the character in, so long as one is using UTF-8 and an appropriate editor for such, of course. That's rather neat. I've been looking for a way to get odd characters without having to resort to character references.


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## Tirian (Nov 19, 2013)

Hebrew characters are part of the Unicode standard. see http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0590.pdf

You don't need to download font's to see these characters - it's part of the unicode standard and a growing number of fonts implement the complete set of codes. Arial for example is one of them.

More detail on the technicalities here - https://www.logos.com/support/windows/L3/fonts


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## MW (Nov 19, 2013)

Matthew Glover said:


> More detail on the technicalities here - https://www.logos.com/support/windows/L3/fonts



Thankyou, Matthew. So does this mean I have the capability in Word to do this without any other tools, or do I need to download something extra?


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## Tirian (Nov 19, 2013)

Word - I presume you have a fairly recent edition? You don't need anything else.... see About creating a Hebrew document - Word - Office.com

Some good Hebrew tools already build into Word


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## MW (Nov 19, 2013)

Matthew Glover said:


> Hebrew characters are part of the Unicode standard. see http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0590.pdf



Thankyou, Matthew. Both the Hebrew and Greek charts make it very plain.

Thankyou to all for your help.


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## xirtam (Nov 19, 2013)

My teacher replied this way, "It isn't the font that matters, it is using a unicode keyboard. You need to activate a Hebrew and Greek unicode keyboard to type in Greek. "

and "Alternatively, if you copy and paste directly from Logos Bible software, this will already be unicode and the conversion should be fine."


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## MW (Nov 19, 2013)

xirtam said:


> My teacher replied this way, "It isn't the font that matters, it is using a unicode keyboard. You need to activate a Hebrew and Greek unicode keyboard to type in Greek. "



Thankyou, Brian. I just followed up this lead. Tyndale House is very helpful on this. Unicode Greek & Hebrew | Tyndale House

After installation, all that is needed is to press the Windows key and the space bar and switch between English, Greek, and Hebrew keyboards. Very straightforward!


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