Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

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Ninurta
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Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

Once again problems with hebrew in Nisus Writer Pro:
1) If I open a Nisus file with NeoOffice, OpenOffice (Win) or Word for Windows all hebrew characters unfortunately are lost. Instead of hebrew there are "normal" latin characters. This is curious because I use Unicode characters (SBL Hebrew or Ezra).
2) The second problem has been discussed in another thread but without clarification. May be it has to do with the first problem: If I change the style of a paragraph all hebrew charcters are transformed to Times although they have been written in SBL hebrew. Why? Hebrew letters should be "fixed" as italic or bold characters. They will NOT change of I change the paragraph style. Mellel handles this well.
Any ideas?
Ruchama
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ruchama »

I must say, that until this morning I never met this problem. However, it did happen to me today- I saved a hebrew file in nisus as .doc, thinking it might be safer to e-mail it this way to pc ms-office users. when I tried to open the file in neooffice, all hebrew charqacters were gone, instead- the german umlaut combinations replaced them. I could not find a way to re-encode the file so finally I faxed it..
any clue?

thanks,
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martin
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by martin »

Ninurta wrote:1) If I open a Nisus file with NeoOffice, OpenOffice (Win) or Word for Windows all hebrew characters unfortunately are lost. Instead of hebrew there are "normal" latin characters. This is curious because I use Unicode characters (SBL Hebrew or Ezra).
There does appear to be an issue here. There's something about the character set reported by the font that either makes our RTF output incorrect or disrupts Word's ability to read the RTF. If I use a font such as New Peninim the issue does not occur. We'll definitely investigate and see what we can do.
2) The second problem has been discussed in another thread but without clarification. May be it has to do with the first problem: If I change the style of a paragraph all hebrew charcters are transformed to Times although they have been written in SBL hebrew. Why?
If a paragraph style defines a font, either directly or because it inherited the font from another style, then yes, the font for the entire paragraph will change when you apply that paragraph style. The thinking is that when you apply that style you want it to apply to the entire paragraph and any manual (non-style) formatting that would override the style should be removed.
shades
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by shades »

martin wrote:[
If a paragraph style defines a font, either directly or because it inherited the font from another style, then yes, the font for the entire paragraph will change when you apply that paragraph style. The thinking is that when you apply that style you want it to apply to the entire paragraph and any manual (non-style) formatting that would override the style should be removed.
This seems counterproductive. If I am writing in English (say Minion), but have 10 words written in Hebrew (Ezra SIL) and 10 words in Greek (Gentium) using the language input, I would expect that even if I change the underlying font of the paragraph style (Minion), the writing in Hebrew and Greek should remain with the Hebrew and Greek font. If not, then it is incumbent on each person to carefully select the original English font and never change.

Or maybe I have misunderstood what you have explained. At my age, anything is possible. :)
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martin
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by martin »

shades wrote:If I am writing in English (say Minion), but have 10 words written in Hebrew (Ezra SIL) and 10 words in Greek (Gentium) using the language input, I would expect that even if I change the underlying font of the paragraph style (Minion), the writing in Hebrew and Greek should remain with the Hebrew and Greek font.
hehe, it's probably not your age that's confused you here- there's a lot of technical jargon in my description. Let me try again to make things clear.

Changing the font of the paragraph style (eg: in the stylesheet) will not alter any of the manually applied fonts (eg: Ezra SIL) in your document. It's only if you re-apply that paragraph style to some actual text in the document will the fonts of that text possibly change. The act of re-applying (or applying for the first time) is taken as a signal by NWP that the user wants the font defined by that paragraph style to be enforced for that paragraph style.

I should mention that fonts defined by other styles are not affected by such style changes- it's only font overrides (eg: non-style formatting) that are removed.
Ninurta
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

Martin,
how - then - can I change the paragraph style without altering the font for Hebrew? I think my two questions are related: changing of any hebrew font to Times (which is not a goog choice for vocalized hebrew) when applying a new paragraph on the one side and all hebrew characters are gone when opening in word or openoffice (both for windows).
It is a real problem because I have to convert EVERY document to word for windows (the publisher's choice) - and when all hebrew characters are lost Nisus unfortunately cannot be my choice. Mellel does this job better!
Again: any ideas so that I can stay with Nisus?
Ruchama
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ruchama »

did you try to use a different font for hebrew? do you need SBL hebrew specifically?
Ninurta
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

It's the same with all unicode-fonts I used (Ezra SIL, Cardo etc.).
By the way: The problem did NOT occur in previous versions of NWP and NWE!
Ruchama
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ruchama »

I must say that I seem to miss something from your description. I have transferred hebrew files from and to nisus for a long time, and never identified the problem you described as a general phenomenum. just now I took a file with mixed hebrew and english text and opened it with neo-office and had no such problem. I deliberately replaced some of the text to SBL hebrew- still no problem.. (not that the transfer is smooth.. I have found already out the in order for word 2003 to read nwp hebrew file correctly I have first to open it in neoofffice- reset the paragraph directions, and then open in word..) but the problem of hebrew text disappearing is rare.. I have a guess that it may have something to do with the choice of default fonts in your office software- i.e. if there fonts are not unicode you may have a problem..

concerning the style problem- I see your point, if a style (in the style sheet ) is changed, all default fonts are changed accordingly. but if you use a unicode font- which should include all characters, including greek and hebrew- why would you like to change the general style while writing. Ideally everything should indeed be possible but reality is tough.. it would be nice to be able to set a default font for each used language but then- the whole point of a unicode font is missed- doesn't it?
If you need to use a different font for each language, try and create a shortcut (of a macro) which will change the language and font in one command (instead of pressing command+space you press something else) and then when another language is needed- use a different macro to re-set the language+font of your choice.. once you get used to it, it is really comfortable. I hope this helps..
Ninurta
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

I do not know whether I understood everything but this solution seems to me a bit too complicated: First, in previous versions of NWP and NWE this problem did not occur. I could open Nisus-files with Word for Windows without any problem. Second, If I change the language to hebrew or greek I change the font as it is defined in the language flag. Third, this problem does not occur in Mellel. I know the structure of Mellel is quite different (secondary font etc.), but - as I said before - it worked well in previous versions of NW. I simply do not understand what has changed. I think it must be a bug.
Ruchama
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ruchama »

maybe it has to do also with leopard, as I said, i tried to transfer my files and had no such problem. I work with tiger. It would be interesting to know whether others experience the same.
Ninurta
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

It seems to me rather curious: When I open an old Nisus file (I think created with a previous version of NWE) everything is working well: The hebrew characters remain when the file is opened in NeoOffice or Word for Windows. But the new files, created with NWP (latest version), make such problems (German umlaute instead of hebrew characters). May be it has to do with Leopard (I am working on).
Ruchama
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ruchama »

I could only reproduce your problem when saving nisus file as doc file. if saved as rtf- file is opened ok, character-wise.
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martin
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by martin »

Ninurta wrote:how - then - can I change the paragraph style without altering the font for Hebrew?
There's two ways I can see to accomplish this:

1. Don't include a font as part of your paragraph style definition, eg: remove "Times" from your Normal style definition (in the stylesheet view).
2. Don't use non-style formatting for your Hebrew text, eg: create a character style called "Hebrew" in your stylesheet which defines a Hebrew font and apply that style to your Hebrew text.

Either of these will prevent the Hebrew font from changing when you apply the Normal paragraph style.

The behavior to clear non-style formatting defined by the paragraph style has been in NWP since it was released and is not a bug.
when all hebrew characters are lost Nisus unfortunately cannot be my choice
Garbling/losing characters when transferring content between applications is a bug under any circumstances, regardless of the applied font. We're looking into the problem and will be working on fixing it for the next update. The bug looks to only affects some fonts that prefer Mac specific text encodings.
Ninurta
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Re: Once again: Hebrew with Nisus

Post by Ninurta »

Martin,
thank you very much for your helpful suggestions!
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