Hebrew Diacritics in Two Minutes
(The following works in almost
any Windows application: Word or even Notepad. You will need a version of Windows
that supports Hebrew, though.)
To add diacritics, make sure CAPS
LOCK is turned on. In this mode, certain key combinations output diacritics. To
add them to a particular letter, place the cursor after the letter. Note
the order of diacritics is important, and you must add diacritics in the
following order:
1.
First add Dgeshim
(or the Shuruk--unfortunately this is the same character).
2.
Then mark the Shin
as right- or left-Shin (e.g., שׁח vs. שׂח).
3.
Now mark
vowels.
|
שְווא |
shift-~ |
|
חטף-סגול (ֱ) |
shift-! |
|
חֲטף-פתח |
shift-@ |
|
חטף-קמץ (ֳ) |
shift-# |
|
חִירִיק |
shift-$ |
|
צֵירה |
shift-% |
|
סֶגול |
shift-^ |
|
פתח |
shift-& |
|
קמץ |
shift-*
|
|
שׂין |
shift-) |
|
שׁין |
shift-( |
|
חוֹלם |
shift-_ |
|
דגּש
או שוּרוּק |
shift-+ |
|
קובוץ |
shift-\ |
These standard key bindings may be
changed (in Word) in the Tools|Customize menu, though doing so is not
recommended.
Note: the separator character (קו מפריד, "—" ) is bound to
Ctrl-<Gr->, that is, the minus usually located at the right end of the
keyboard. When typing works for the project, please take care not to use a
hyphen (מקף,
"-") instead of a separator.
To render and edit Hebrew diacritics on
modern Unix systems (on Linux this will probably be easiest), install GTK+ 2 or
higher, and Pango, both freely available from here. Any GTK2 application will then
automatically have bi-directional Hebrew and diacritics support, provided you
configure your keyboard to enter them and your X server to display them. See
Dov Grobgeld's page on Using Hebrew in Gtk 2.0 for instructions.
XFree86 keyboard note: the keyboard
layout given and described in that page is different from the Microsoft layout
given above. Also, it uses the right Alt key as a toggle between Hebrew and
English input modes; some people prefer to have both a "LOCK" key and
a "shift" key for Hebrew. To change that, modify the line
include "en_US(pc105)+group(toggle)"
with something like
include "en_US(pc105)+group(switch)+group(caps_toggle)"
. This will turn your right Alt to a
temporary language shift key, and CAPS LOCK to a toggle control. Look at the
file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/group for more options (such as utilizing the
Windows or Menu keys for these functions).
Contact Asaf Bartov with any
questions at editor@benyehuda.org,
or by phone (052-3593996 or +972-52-3593996 if calling from outside Israel).
Gaal Yahas <gaal@forum2.org> is also
willing to help with diacritics in Unix.
Back to the
help page or
View the Hebrew
version of this page.