Has this Windows-only model of distribution been widely aired amongst the membership of the Society of Biblical Literature? I know that many SBL scholars use Macintosh computers, and for publishers to accept only Windows-generated documents seems an onerous restriction, particularly in such a large and internationally diverse organization as SBL.
The fonts have a Unicode cmap, so they can be used in any environment that supports Unicode text input and editing. The font format is a TrueType flavoured OpenType font, which is the most widely supported font file and outline format (probably ever), and has native system support in all flavours of Windows, on Mac OS X, and on Linux and other flavours of UNIX via FreeType.
In order to correctly *display* the text strings, the lookup features in the font need to be applied by a layout engine. This is done automatically in applications on Windows that make use of standard system text processing APIs. This is also done in some cross-platform, third party applications, such as the Middle East version of Adobe InDesign, that use internal text processing engines instead of system calls. I am not certain what level of Hebrew layout support is currently available to Linux etc. users, but I do know that both FreeType and ICU seek to achieve the same results as Uniscribe using the same fonts.
The problem you have is that Apple, despite being involved with Unicode from the earliest days, have only recently shipped an OS with native Unicode text processing available; this text processing is only available to 'Cocoa' apps, i.e. apps writtenly natively for OS X, rather than 'Carbonised' i.e. updated from previous versions; there are still very few native Cocoa apps, and even the MS Office suite under Apple has very poor Unicode support compared to the same apps under Windows; Apple have been saying for years that they would support OpenType Layout features in some way, but have yet to do anything; Apple continue to rely on their own AAT font format, despite the fact that almost no font developers are producing fonts for that format (GX by any other name smelling as sweet). So while I sympathise with your concern that the fonts might appear to be 'Windows-only', I think the proper target for your frustration is Apple, who have been systematically fumbling the ball for several years now.
Also, are you saying that the requisite font layout features are only doable via OpenType?
In the initial version of the font, yes. It is an OpenType font, using OpenType glyph substitution and positioning technology to correctly render Biblical Hebrew from Unicode encoded text strings. That said, if funding is available, it would be possible to make a version of the typeface in the AAT format, using that technology to produce the same shaping (I've some experience with AAT, but I'm not sure just how difficult it might be to achieve some of the cleverer contextual stuff I have in the SBL Hebrew OT font; AAT is a very difficult format to develop for, and Apple's tools leave a *lot* to be desired). We're already looking at making a custom PostScript version of the font to be used with some older, non-Unicode typesetting software.
The best long-term solution is for Apple to follow through on their promise to support OpenType Layout features, so that we have a genuinely cross platform font solution.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
It is necessary that by all means and cunning, the cursed owners of books should be persuaded to make them available to us, either by argument or by force. - Michael Apostolis, 1467
