Hebrew Keyboard

Phil Hunter

 

     Can anyone tell if how to install the Hebrew keyboard on my Mac?

 

 

           Thanks

fgh

Welcome to the forums.

Stephen Hunter said:

Can anyone tell if how to install the Hebrew keyboard on my Mac?

You don't need to; it's already there. Just activate it in System Preferences, and then you can switch either from the menu bar or with Cmd-spacebar. If you need instructions, you can find some here. 

David L Adams

Stephen:

One thing to understand is that Logos uses Unicode internally, and that one of the key features of Unicode is that (unlike ASCII) it separates the character designation from both keyboard and the font itself. The net effect of this is that you can have multiple keyboards (and several fonts) installed, even for a single language and the resulting files can be exchanged between users, even if they have different keyboards (or even different Hebrew fonts) installed.

Not all Hebrew keyboards (or all Hebrew fonts) are equally well suited for Biblical texts, especially if you want to use vowel points and accents. I would not recommend using the Hebrew keyboard that comes pre-installed on Macs, as it does not give you access to all of the marks necessary to support biblical Hebrew. It is better to download and install one of the keyboards that is designed to support the full range of characters that is necessary for biblical texts. There are a number of these available, both commercially and free. Unless you have a special need (as in matching a keyboard layout that you are accustomed to use), I would suggest that you download and install the keyboard drivers provided by the Society of Biblical Literature. These are free for non-commercial use. These keyboard drivers were designed to work with the SBL Hebrew font that Logos uses as its default, and allow you to enter every character that the font supports. There are two different keyboard layouts (SIL and Tiro) included in the set, and which you use is really a matter of personal preference. The documentation has printable pages that show where each of the characters is located on each keyboard.

The following link takes you to the Hebrew font page at the SBL site. There is a link there to the font (which you do not need since Logos already installed it) and the keyboards for both windows and Macintosh. There are also links to the user manuals (with the printable keyboard maps). The BIBLICAL FONTS FAQ link will take you to full instructions on installing the keyboards (really quite easy on a Mac). The FAQ has instructions for the various versions of windows at the top of the page, so you have to scroll down quite a ways to get to the Mac info.

http://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_SBLHebrew.aspx

I hope that is helpful. Please let me know if I can do anything further to assist you in this.

DLA

Michael Agerbo Mørch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/264414#Comment_264414

Thank you for a helpful link. I've installed SBL Biblical Hebrew SIL and I think it's working very well. But I can't make the keyboard writing the short wovels (Hatef patah, hatef segol and hatef qamets). When I am tapping alt+shift I can see on my "Show keyboard" that it's the thing to do, but nothing is getting down on the paper. Does that make any sense?

Besides that the keyboard is perfect. Do you know what to do?

Best,

Michael, Denmark

George Somsel

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/556194#Comment_556194

Michael Agerbo Mørch said:

Thank you for a helpful link. I've installed SBL Biblical Hebrew SIL and I think it's working very well. But I can't make the keyboard writing the short wovels (Hatef patah, hatef segol and hatef qamets). When I am tapping alt+shift I can see on my "Show keyboard" that it's the thing to do, but nothing is getting down on the paper. Does that make any sense?

Besides that the keyboard is perfect. Do you know what to do?

Best,

Michael, Denmark

This can also be a problem on Windows machines.  The problem is not that the keyboard doesn't support the characters but rather that I never remember the hatef key combinations.  I suspect the same is probably true for you so I suggest you consult the keyboard documentation.  I suppose I'll need to make a greater effort to remember the combinations once I've looked them up (flash cards?).