Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

[Will Parsons]

I've never completely understood how to deal with fonts, and find
myself somewhat frustrated with the situation where I'm composing a
text mainly in English but that also includes some Hebrew text.  The
problem is that although the English text is displayed in a font that
is completely legible, the Hebrew text is hard to read.  (I think this
is partly because the letters in the Hebrew alphabet tend to be more
easily confused with each other than the letters in the Latin
alphabet, and also because even though the point-size of the Hebrew
font is presumably the same as the English font, the letters in the
Hebrew text give the impression of being smaller in size than the
English text.)

So, I'd like to arrange it so that both the English and the Hebrew
text are equally legible, but haven't the slightest idea of how to
accomplish that.

-- 
Will

Re: Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Will Parsons <oudeis@nodomain.invalid>
> Date: 23 Sep 2012 23:59:45 GMT
> 
> So, I'd like to arrange it so that both the English and the Hebrew
> text are equally legible, but haven't the slightest idea of how to
> accomplish that.

First, find a font that gives you legible Hebrew characters.  (You
didn't say what system are you one; the way of doing this depends on
the OS.)  Let's say that font's name is "CoolFont".

Then put this in your ~/.emacs:

  (set-fontset-font t 'hebrew "CoolFont")

This causes Emacs to use the specified font for Hebrew.

If you find a font that is good for both English and Hebrew, then
setting the 'font' attribute of the 'default' face will cause Emacs to
use that font as the default font.

Re: Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

[Will Parsons]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Will Parsons <oudeis@nodomain.invalid>
>> Date: 23 Sep 2012 23:59:45 GMT
>> 
>> So, I'd like to arrange it so that both the English and the Hebrew
>> text are equally legible, but haven't the slightest idea of how to
>> accomplish that.
>
> First, find a font that gives you legible Hebrew characters.  (You
> didn't say what system are you one; the way of doing this depends on
> the OS.)  Let's say that font's name is "CoolFont".
>
> Then put this in your ~/.emacs:
>
>   (set-fontset-font t 'hebrew "CoolFont")

Thanks - now I'll have to find a good legible Hebrew font.  (I'm
running on FreeBSD.)

> This causes Emacs to use the specified font for Hebrew.
>
> If you find a font that is good for both English and Hebrew, then
> setting the 'font' attribute of the 'default' face will cause Emacs to
> use that font as the default font.

The way I'm specifying my default font now is in .Xresources:

Emacs.font: 9x15

But as I said, although this looks good in English, I find the Hebrew
font it pulls in a bit hard to read.

-- 
Will

Re: Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Will Parsons <oudeis@nodomain.invalid>
> Date: 24 Sep 2012 19:24:10 GMT
> 
> The way I'm specifying my default font now is in .Xresources:
> 
> Emacs.font: 9x15

You can specify a fontset in X resources as well, see the node
"Defining Fontsets" in the Emacs User Manual.

Re: Customizing fonts in a mult-language (English+Hebrew) environment

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 24.09.2012 um 21:24 schrieb Will Parsons:

> Emacs.font: 9x15

This is a pixels based font from X11. You can also use vectors based TrueType and OpenType fonts. They usually span more than just US-ASCII. Here are some: http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Hebrew2.html.

--
Greetings

  Pete

The box said "Use Windows 95 or better," so I got a Macintosh.