Hi,
I think for 99% of the users writing in Hebrew, XeTeX is the (only)
reasonable choice for writing in Hebrew. There are many broken things
pdfTeX when it comes to Hebrew (and RTL languages), and fonts are only one
of them (another example is hyperref).
If you are forced to use pdfTex (or non-XeTeX) you should prefer using
culmus-latex over ivritex. Ivritex has been deprecated for +10 years.
I would suggest shipping LyX with a template file configured with XeTeX
(and sensible and common fonts).
Thats my two cents.
Thanks,
Guy
On Wed, 24 Apr 2019 at 17:16, Guenter Milde <mi...@users.sf.net> wrote:
> Dear LyX developers,
>
> currently, typesetting Hebrew with LyX's default settings (i.e. TeX fonts)
> requires installation of font packages not in TeXLive.
> Installation instructions (partially somewhat outdated) are on the LyX
> wiki.
>
> The alternatives are:
>
> ivritex fonts
> bitmap,
> font encoding LHE (7bit, non-standard missing small latin letters)
> no vocalisation (nikud) characters
>
> culmus fonts
> Type 1,
> font encoding HE8,
> compiling with dvipdfm works only after converting some fonts
> with `t1binary` and custom install.
>
>
> The current default is LHE (ivritex fonts).
>
> For selecting the HE8 fonts, there are two options:
>
> a) use custom fontencoding setting [HE8,T1] and preamble code
> (as in unicodesymbols/012-hebrew_he_HE8.lyx)
>
> -1 "expert" setup required for each document
>
> +1 no "hidden" change of the default setup (LHE fonts from ifritex)
>
> b) patch lib/languages
>
> diff --git a/lib/languages b/lib/languages
> index 3f8733787d..097a2f85ac 100644
> --- a/lib/languages
> +++ b/lib/languages
> @@ -780,10 +780,14 @@ Language hebrew
> QuoteStyle english
> InternalEncoding true
> # babel-hebrew expects the encoding for *other* languages
> last:
> - # FontEncoding HE8
> - # Define the font encoding the babel-hebrew way and
> + # FontEncoding HE8|LHE
> + # Use font encoding HE8 if the Culmus fonts are installed
> and
> # work around too simple test for article-like classes in
> rlbabel.def.
> PreBabelPreamble
> + \IfFileExists{he8david.fd}{%
> + \def\HeblatexEncoding{HE8}
> + \def\HeblatexEncodingFile{he8enc}%
> + }{}
> \providecommand{\l@chapter}{\relax}
> EndPreBabelPreamble
> DateFormats "d MMMM yyyy|d MMM yyyy|dd/MM/yyyy"
>
> +1 selects Type1 (vector) fonts (Culmus) as default, if available
> and falls back to LHE if not.
> (This can be overridden in documents with preamble code
> similar to option a).)
> -0 clumsy
> -1 if a user has both, LHE and HE8 fonts installed, documents
> that worked with dvipdfm may now fail.
>
>
> What should we use in LyX 2.4?
>
> Günter
>
>
