Shalom copyright 1990 by Jonathan Brecher. I made this font. If you mess with it or claim it as your own, I’m going to be very upset. All rights reserved, and assorted other legal stuff.
I created this font for me and am distributing it just because, so I proclaim this font to be “ANYWARE.” Since I just made that up, let me explain. You’ve got this font. Great. I’m not requiring you to do anything to keep it. Do ANYthing you want with it. (Modifications to the code and sales for profit excluded).
On the other hand I’m not saying that I don’t want anything. I’ve spent about 50 hours on this font. I spent the time because I wanted to. Still, you are receiving the results of this work. If you think that this font is worth something to you, I would certainly not complain. Of course, you are the only one who knows how much this font is worth to you; I am setting no particular fee. Postcards are nice. Critiques are great (and rewarded with a revised version in exchange for an e-mail address or a SASE and a disk). Money is always good too. (actually money is a little more than good…)
Shalom was created with Fontographer 3.0.5. It is a Type 3 font. It should work fine on any Mac, but if it doesn’t, it’s not my fault. No Warranties and stuff like that.
Please give copies of this font, along with all related files, to everyone. It may not be sold except by users’ groups for duplicating fees, commercial services for downloading time, etc.
I may be reached at:
Jonathan Brecher, 9 Skyview Road, Lexington, MA 02173
or
brecher@husc9.harvard.edu (Internet)
I also regularly call the BCS•Mac BBS (617-625-6747)
and The Graphics Factory (617-849-0347)
Installation instructions:
1) Put Shalom in your System Folder.
2) Install Shalom.bmap with Font/DA Mover 3.8 or later (or use Suitcase, etc.)
NOW FOR THE NEAT STUFF, or, WHAT THIS FONT IS ABOUT
Shalom is a fairly complete Hebrew typeface. It is, however, just another font as far as the Mac is concerned. The standard American Macintosh is not really set up for an alphabet that reads from right to left. Anyone using this font will find themselves composing Hebrew text “backwards,” or left to right. Sorry, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it. If you really need a Hebrew font that writes in the right direction, you probably want something else. Try some commercial places. A company called Davka based out of Israel has received high praise from others, but I know nothing about them personally.
IMPORTANT: Shalom is a postscript font designed to be printed on a laser printer. The bitmapped screen fonts are passable in the sizes I’ve distributed (18,24) and pretty much illegible in other sizes. Often the vowels will look strange even in these sizes. DO NOT WORRY. If you use a laser printer, the screen font is irrelevant as long as the laser font is in your system folder. The screen may look like crap, but the laser printout should be okay. You really don’t want to print this on an Imagewriter. There are plenty of public domain bitmapped Hebrew fonts designed specifically for the Imagewriter if that’s all you have.
I’ve done my best to map the Hebrew alphabet to the qwerty keyboard, but some things just don’t work. The aleph, bet, gimel, daled, hay, vav, zayin, yod, kaf, lamed, mem, nun, samach, pey, qoph, resh, and tav are transliterated to the a,b,g,d,h,v,z,y,k,l,m,n,s,p,q,r, and t respectively. The shin is on the w because the shape is similar, and the final mem is mapped to the o for the same reason. The final kaf is on the j because the j is next to the k. The final pey (fey) is on the f. Beyond that you’ll just have to memorize the rest.
The center dot (dagesh) for the bet, kaf, pey, etc. may be placed by typing a ] after (to the right of) the letter.
One nice feature of this font is that it is really three fonts in one. The regular keys have “old-fashioned” letters, the shifted keys have cursive letters, and the option-shifted keys have modern stick letters. Now if only the keyboard had an option-lock as well as a shift lock…
The vowels are pretty much strung along the number keys:
1: cheereek
2: tzayray
3: segol
4: sh’va
5: koobootz
6: chataf segol
7: chataf patach
8: chataf kamatz
9: high sh’va (9) and high kamatz (shift-9) both used only with final chaf
-: patach
=: kamatz
In all the writing styles, the characters come in one of four widths, and since Hebrew likes its vowels centered under the letters, there must be four sets of vowels. Most letters (aleph, bet, hey, etc.) take the vowels produced by the keys listed above (1,2,3, etc.). The narrow letters (yod, vav) use shifted numbers (!,@,#, etc.). The half-narrow gimel, zayin, and nun use the option-numbers, while the wide shin uses the option-shift-numbers. In all cases the vowel must be typed after (i.e. to the right of) the consonant under which it will go. For the techie types out there, the vowels all have zero width and negative offset. This makes editing the vowels extremely difficult, but there really was no other option. I could not produce the vowels like Apple does the French accents because any vowel must be able to be combined with any consonant. Try getting an n with an acute accent (used in some Eastern European languages). It can’t be done!
The vowels will not be visible with the KeyCaps desk accessory. Sorry. If you plan on using this font a lot, I suggest you print out the cheat sheet that is distributed with it.
Throughout the above discussion I have referred only to the vowels which go below consonants. The cholam and shoorook may also be created. The cholam is typed with the [ key in any of the four positions to be used without a vav. A full cholam may be produced by typing a vav (v) and then pressing option-v. A shoorook may be created by typing shift-] after (to the right of) a vav.
There are, in addition, several other characters available. A dot over the left of a shin may be found under the 0 (zero), while the corresponding dot for the right of the shin will be found under shift-0 (zero). Option-9 produces a raised connecting bar. The backslash produces an accent mark (meteg) in one of four places. As mentioned before, a dagesh (in any of four places) may be accessed with the ].
The option-space key is a space with a width of one. This may be useful if you need to position a vowel more precisely or you wish to position a meteg and a vowel further apart.
The period, comma, slash, question mark, single quote, double quote and colon are where they normally belong. A backslash may be produced with option-/.
