Hebrew on kindle, I'm desperate!

[draytonbenner]

There is now a Hebrew Bible displaying beautifully on the Kindle. If you want help with Hebrew on the Kindle (or Hebrew on the Nook), contact its publisher, Miklal Software Solutions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by draytonbenner

There is now a Hebrew Bible displaying beautifully on the Kindle. If you want help with Hebrew on the Kindle (or Hebrew on the Nook), contact its publisher, Miklal Software Solutions.

The problem as I see it is that this Hebrew Bible for the Kindle is huge. Each Hebrew letter is a separate image. You could do this much easier in ePub if you had a font or fonts that had all the characters the way you wanted them. No need then for separate images. So really, the Mobipocket version is no better then an eBook full of scanned pages

[draytonbenner]

JSWolf,

There are several advantages to this Hebrew Bible for Kindle over a simple scan.

First, it has advanced navigational capabilities. People do not usually read the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament linearly from start to finish. This version allows users to jump quickly to the precise book, chapter, and verse that interests them, move to the next/previous chapter using the 5-way controller, etc. in addition to the usual table of contents. The navigational features are covered briefly in the product description on Amazon and in more detail in the fuller description of this Kindle Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in Hebrew at the publisher's website and the preface to this Kindle Hebrew Bible, found also on the publisher's website.

Second, if one were to take an image of the entire Hebrew Bible page by page, depending on the image quality, it would easily by 10-100 times as large a file as what is presented here.

Third, having it in Amazon's format allows for the convenience of deciding to read it and being able to do so in one minute, syncing across devices, etc.

With regard to font size, I have a couple comments. First, if you only downloaded the sample, please note what is in the product description on Amazon and in the fuller description on my site, namely that Amazon is goofing up the sample, making the Hebrew extremely large and unreadable in the actual text (as opposed to the preface). The full file is working properly, however. You can see screenshots of this Kindle Hebrew Bible. Second, there are two sizes of BHS, the standard scholarly publication of the Hebrew Bible. The font size here is akin to the larger of the two. Moreover, the size was chosen out of my extensive experience interacting with customers, especially at the Society of Biblical Literature meetings, of one of my clients, the leader in mobile Bible software, for which I have made Hebrew Bibles. If you are accustomed to modern Hebrew, it will look big for you. I certainly would not publish a modern Hebrew book (or even a rabbinic work) with a font as large as this. Because of the presence of the vowels and cantillation marks, most people prefer a larger font size for the Hebrew Bible than they would for other Hebrew texts.

Finally, you mention the ePub format. Actually, we have also just produced an ePub Hebrew Bible for Nook. ePub does indeed have some features that Kindle's mobi format lacks, but support for RTL varies. If you simply want to use the Firefox plug-in ePub Reader on Windows, then having nice-looking Hebrew is no problem. However, the Nook, like the Sony e-Reader, lacks RTL support altogether. Moreover, when it comes to fonts for Biblical Hebrew that place the vowels and cantillation marks well (particularly SBL Hebrew and Ezra SIL), they only work really well on Windows because they are working with Microsoft's Uniscribe library. Even if the Nook or Sony e-Reader supported RTL and one were to embed one of these fonts, the vowels and cantillation marks would be misplaced.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem as I see it is that this Hebrew Bible for the Kindle is huge. Each Hebrew letter is a separate image. You could do this much easier in ePub if you had a font or fonts that had all the characters the way you wanted them.

Still wouldn't help. ADE doesn't support right-to-left languages.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Still wouldn't help. ADE doesn't support right-to-left languages.

So type it in backwards so it looks correct on screen. There's no reason that it cannot be done that way.

So if you wanted to see my nick going the opposite direction, you just type floWSJ and there you have it. Not that difficult a concept really.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by draytonbenner

Finally, you mention the ePub format. Actually, we have also just produced an ePub Hebrew Bible for Nook. ePub does indeed have some features that Kindle's mobi format lacks, but support for RTL varies. If you simply want to use the Firefox plug-in ePub Reader on Windows, then having nice-looking Hebrew is no problem. However, the Nook, like the Sony e-Reader, lacks RTL support altogether. Moreover, when it comes to fonts for Biblical Hebrew that place the vowels and cantillation marks well (particularly SBL Hebrew and Ezra SIL), they only work really well on Windows because they are working with Microsoft's Uniscribe library. Even if the Nook or Sony e-Reader supported RTL and one were to embed one of these fonts, the vowels and cantillation marks would be misplaced.

Not a problem for the font. Just make a font that has letters with the vowels. Then you don't have an issue of not having the vowles.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So type it in backwards so it looks correct on screen. There's no reason that it cannot be done that way.

So if you wanted to see my nick going the opposite direction, you just type floWSJ and there you have it. Not that difficult a concept really.

It's more complicated that that. You have issues such as paragraph indents, which need to be on the right, rather than the left. Lines need to wrap on the left rather than the right, and so on.

It'll need to wait for readers to support ePub 3, which does have support for RTL languages, before they can sensibly be used for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. Until then, using PDF is (unfortunately) the only real solution, with all its attendant problems.

[osnova]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So really, the Mobipocket version is no better then an eBook full of scanned pages

I disagree. I am not sure how this version was done but most likely each letter would have only one image. Each word would then be "typeset" reusing the letter-images as many times as needed. At least that's how I did this for certain missing letters in several of my publications. The issue is that font size cannot be changed.

I've bought this Hebrew Bible and it is beautifully done, considering that the Kindle does not support RTL in general and Hebrew in particular. The only downside in addition to the fixed font size, is the longer refresh time. I am also glad that the author has borrowed the Direct Verse Jump from me.

This is how they did transcription symbols in the MW Advanced Learner's Dictionary (although, its formatting is somewhat more complicated because it was made with low-, medium- and high-resolution screens in mind, so each symbol has three options).

[Matan]

IF you want Hebrew in the browser, check out the "3.1 software on Kindle DX" thread. In version 3.1 the browser supports Hebrew out of the box.