Hebrew and English Text

[walt]

I am trying to write both Hebrew and English text one line above the other. The Hebrew text is the reference text. I want to be able to do "cut and paste" operations on the text. However, the Hebrew and English text must remain linked in the cut and paste operation. Is this possible with Nisus Writer Pro? How?

[Ruchama]

Do you mean that you want to select part of the english line and the corresponding hebrew part (like text and commentary?) if so, I think it is impossible. (but it has nothing to do with hebrew, it is impossible also is english-english lines).

[martin]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are trying to do. In what way do you intend for the text to be "linked"? What do you expect to see when you paste the text?

[walt]

Ruchama and Martin, thank you for your quick response. I am sorry that mine has been delayed. I will try to describe what I am after.

My idea is to have a line of Hebrew text and immediately beneath it a line of "English Text." The word/phrase of English text would be the meaning of the Hebrew word in the Hebrew text. If for any reason, the Hebrew text needed editing, the linked English would move with the Hebrew word as a unit. I guess that another way to phrase the question is: can Nisus Writer compose text from two line fragments and can it generate such two line fragments for that purpose? Or could macro(s) be generated to accomplish this task?

[Ruchama]

Do you know of ANY wordprocessor (for mac or pc) that can do it? even for english/english texts?

[xiamenese]

If I understand what you want, I'd do this in a table without any borders, where each chunk — for want of a better word — of text was in its own cell which could be expanded or contracted as necessary. Whether you had a Hebrew row above and an English row below, or you simply used a line-feed in a single cell to separate Hebrew and English would be something to play with. To what extent you could automate the creation of such tables is also something I don't know.



Mark

[Ruchama]

this indeed can be done, but there will be no attachments between the 'chunks' of text. each cell should be edited separately. and I think that was the basic requirement of the first post. (That is, if I understood correctly).

[martin]

I'm not sure there's going to be any good solution here. It sounds to me what is really desired is a feature called gloss/ruby, which Nisus Writer does not have. Gloss basically places small annotations directly above/below a bit a text. When the marked text shifts its position, so does the gloss. Japanese use this for furigana, something that helps the reader understand/pronounce the more complicated Kanji characters.

[MacSailor]

Do you know of ANY wordprocessor (for mac or pc) that can do it? even for english/english texts?

I believe that the old WordPerfect for Mac did had this feature.

[rabbi]

If I'm not mistaken, nisus writer classic had this feature.

[MacSailor]

If I'm not mistaken, nisus writer classic had this feature.

Then it shouldn’t be to hard to revive or implement this feature in the current or next version of NWP?

[walt]

I gather that I should create a table of two rows and one column. In the first row I write the Hebrew word. In the second row I write the English word|phrase. I then place this table in juxtaposition to other similarly created tables and generate the desired text? The page, then, is a series of tables and not a "manuscript." This is an interesting concept, but likely tedious? I like the concept that it may be possible to reconstruct the capability in NisusWriter Pro.

[walt]

I can create a series of tables each with a Hebrew word in the first row and an English word|phrase in the second row. However, I cannot get them to be in the same line, following one another to create text. they each control the whole line and do not permit aggregation of tables next to one another. Perhaps, I don't know how to move tables about on the page?

[walt]

I tried a different approach. I created a table of one column and two rows. I wrote a Hebrew word in the first row and an English word in the second row. Then I inserted a column to the left of the first column. I continued in this fashion until I generated a line of text. I would like to append the file to this email. However, the e-mail system does not recognize either .rtf or .pdf files. So, all I can say is that it does display the text as I had originally suggested. As I work with this more, I'll report back on the flexibility or lack thereof of this mode of generating text. Thanks to all for the help so far.