Hebrew fonts
Thursday, February 7th, 2008 10:02 pmMy plan to create my own Friday night siddur is coming along apace—already, I've managed to collect the entirety of the Hebrew texts off the Web (though I did have to manually convert Wikipedia's text for יְדִיד נֶפֶשׁ from the Sephardi (and, according to Wikipedia, original wording). I've also been having fun putting in bits of commentary—interesting things I've discovered about the service, which I haven't seen in standard siddur commentaries.
It's not been without hitches, though. Micros~1 Word is struggling to cope with such a thoroughly bidirectional text. I've set the whole document to run right to left, and now the English is not appearing right, with such oddities as full stops appearing at the left of the line they're on; and sometimes a line with two sentence halves on it ordering them the right way.
Moreover, I'm having font problems. Windows does not typeset the vowel חוֹלָם properly; it creates an unwanted space between it and the surrounding letters. I can get around this where it's combined with ו by using the precomposed form וֹ, but obviously this doesn't completely solve the problem. Is it just the version of Windows I use at work that does this, or have other people seen this too?
One alternative would be to desert Windows for Open Office running on Fedora Linux at home—but that brings its own problems. Firstly the default font it uses for Hebrew is a san serif one, with completely equal weight for the horizontal and vertical strokes. I might be moving in the opposite direction to everyone else—whether the Singer's fifth edition, Artscroll or the Limmud zemiron—but if I'm putting together a siddur, I damn well want something traditional-looking, with heavy horizontals and curly serifs (see below). There are some traditional fonts installed on epicyclic, but they're badly configured: they look fine so long as you leave the vowels out, but if you put them in, many of them are displaced to the left.
Annoyingly, Firefox displays Hebrew in a traditional-looking font fine—but an HTML page for a web browser is not really a suitable package for doing DTP design.
A third possibility is to investigate using ivriTeX (or LyX), but last time I tried that out, ivriTeX couldn't handle vowels, and there doesn't seem to be a new version. So at the moment, I'm a little stuck, and waiting for a solution. Fortunately, I've got lots else to be getting on with for this project—but any solution which involves radically changing formats will involve having to redo the laying-out work I've already done.
Which brings me nicely onto something I've been meaning to blog about for ages: Hebrew font design. For me the quintessentially pleasing classical Hebrew font (by which I mean a traditional font, not one for classical Hebrew!) is that in the siddur I grew up with in shul, the second-edition Singer's Prayerbook:

It has the heavy horizontals, light verticals and curly serifs suggestive of (without quite being in genuine emulation of) calligraphy (see inset). Because it's so traditional, it's very similar to many other traditional typefaces, e.g. that in the Birnbaum and Routledge machzors, and the siddur I was given in primary school:

(This page displays the completely pointless—and potentially confusing—variation in typefaces that characterises many Chareidi siddurim, which the Singer's sought to deliberately move away from.)
The font in the second edition Singer's has for me, a comforting quality that's not quite there in the centenary edition:

and is lacking a bit further still in the first edition, especially in the smaller type:

It's also a very clear typeface: ס and ם, two easily confusable letters, are rendered quite different, as can be seen towards the left of the top line above: Almost the whole lower part of the ס is rounded, whereas in many other typefaces, including all the other ones above, but with my school siddur as a particularly bad example, the only part of the ס that differs from the ם is the bottom-right corner. Frankly, I'm astonished that having had this distinction in the second edition, it was abandoned in the centenary edition. I've been able to read Hebrew with some degree of fluency since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but to this day when I meet a nearly-square letter at the end of a word in a font that does not make this distinction clear, I have to stop and work out which letter it is, if I do not recognise the word.
Until the mid-eighties, I don't think I ever saw a prayerbook that did not use a font resembling one of the above. And then Artscroll came along, and at a stroke revolutionised everything:

I'll make no secret of it; I don't like the Artscroll font. It goes against
how Ashkenazim have been printing, and before that, writing, Hebrew for
centuries. (The example on the right is from the thousand year old Aleppo
Codex.) Those heavy horizontals are important to me—especially the upper one.
See, Hebrew is written, in holy documents at least, in letters hanging
from the line, rather than on top of the line, like in English. (This is why
you'll sometimes see photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls upside-down!)
For most of the last two thousand years, the upper and lower bars running along
the row of letters have had equal weight, but originally the upper one was more
important—see the example on the left from the Dead Sea Scrolls. (The
thickness distinction between horizontals and verticals doesn't come across
well here; but
Wikipedia provides
good examples of this distinction from 2500 years ago, exempli
gratia to the right.) The upper bar was the one from which the letters hung. On
the top line on the left you can see a ל going above the line; the lower part
doesn't come down as far as the other letters—and you can see from this how ל
(or its equivalent in the related Phoenician alphabet) ended up turning into
the Latin letter L.
So here there's this tradition going back 2500 years, and Artscroll come along and in the name of funkiness, trash it. And, to my horror, most people seem to think this is a Good Thing. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a font luddite in Hebrew. I have no objection to new and inventive fonts. I just believe they have their places, and a siddur is not that place.
As if the Artscroll siddurim displacing traditional fonts left, right and centre wasn't bad enough, other people then began emulating them; first the likes of UJS and Limmud, but then even the Singer's Prayerbook:

Now the below isn't quite the same font as Artscroll use, but it's close enough that you need to have a close look at it to tell the difference. That said, there are some good things to be said about the font used in the Singer's Prayerbook fourth edition: it indicates clearly, as do some other siddurim I have seen, the difference between a קַמָץ קָטָן and a regular קַמָץ, and between a שְׁוָא נַח and a שְׁוָא נַע, which is invaluable if you're either (a) not good at reading Hebrew, or (b) don't normally use the Israeli pronunciation scheme.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-07 11:52 pm (UTC)The fonts you enjoy are a typical examples of Ashkenaz square fonts, though they are not as extreme as they became mid nineteenth century, where the columns were so thin they were non-existent. Sefaradic forms are far closer to those dead sea scrolls and the aleppo codex, and tend to be based more on a triangle shape than a square, which in fact makes them easier to read because the letters differentiate better.
Most bibles (and actually most anything in Hebrew) printed in Europe from the 17th through the 19th centuries used some form or another of the ashkenaz meruba font, and it may feel more "traditional" but is really rather difficult on the eye to read, because everything looks like a square - the letters do not separate easily as you read.
Frank Ruehl font was the first one to be produced on a rectangular rather than square form in over 3 centuries, and it revolutionised the field. Unfortunately it has become its own form of dinosaur, and is far too prevalent in modern Hebrew publishing despite suffering many of the same problems the meruba font did, only in a rectangle form. I point this out mostly to show how stagnant Hebrew typography has been for most of the printing age. Calligraphy is a different matter altogether, and to be honest - good, legible, english fonts do not follow calligraphy anymore either, and haven't since the 17th century.
The font in Artscroll is called Hadassah, and dates to the 40's or 50's. at that time 5 whole new fonts were created (after a period of maybe one font a decade), and three of those looked at the Cairo Archives and other more ancient writing (like the scrolls), and drew inspiration from there.
Hadassah tried to created a balance between the meruba font and the dead sea scrolls, but I think it failed to create a font for running text and is far more suited to titles or short text than a complete book. However, it is not a modern hebrew font - far from it. It is a font from a period of Zionism where return and affirmation of the roots and the land were very important, and as such I think it has as much relevance to be used for a holy text as the meruba variations. The letters are easier to differentiate from each other, since it uses a balanced combination of square and trangle shapes, but the lack of contrast makes everything look grey, which doesn't help legibility.
By the way, the regular weight Artscroll uses has no contrast at all, but as the weight gets heavier the contrast grows (as in the bars become heavier but the columns not so much), at least in my own variation of it. For that reason when I choose to use Hadassah I always use a heavier weight. I also think the second text you show here is either a bad digitisation of Hadassah with a slightly heavier weight or a font that has borrowed perhaps too much from Hadassah (I shan't call it an imitation, but I might once I've seen it properly).
As a small aside - there is (or was) a Hebrew edition of office, iirc, which handles the bi-directional troubles you have, though I'd have thought that by now they should have integrated that into the regular office suit..
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 12:48 pm (UTC)Ouch. You're touching a subject that's close to my heart, and making a whole mess of it, I'm afraid.
Well, that may be the case; I never claimed to know what I'm talking about. I'm just giving you the grassroots feedback. I didn't know about what people were doing in the Cairo Geniza or in Zionist font foundries; I'm just telling you how it seemed to someone growing up in a provincial Jewish community in the Diaspora. It don't recall ever seeing anything like Hadassah before the mid-eighties; everything I saw—from siddurim (Singer's Prayerbook, the above-shown siddur, the little one I was given to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee*, and Birnbaum and Routledge machzors) to chumashim (both Soncino lines (Hertz and Cohen), plus the traditional text-plus-Onkelos-plus-Rashi we studied in primary school†, etc) to bentshers (universally JNF ones in those days) to more different styles of haggadah than you can shake a stick at—had a common look-and-feel, which Hadassah broke, badly.
Maybe it had been around since the fifties; all I'm saying is that it never made it as far as Newcastle.
*shrug* I'm just someone who's respectful of tradition, and dislikes change for change's sake. And that's what Hadassah and fonts like it felt like to me.
* Which was singularly inappropriate, as it had the Star-Spangled Banner at the back, opposite the Hatikvah. Me, being a four-year-old who didn't know any better, I assumed the former was the translation of the latter. Many years later I discovered an identical siddur in the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem; the Yehiva's Director, Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb, told me he had been given another such siddur in the 1950s!
† My teachers were chareidim from Gateshead; what did you expect?
I also think the second text you show here is either a bad digitisation of Hadassah with a slightly heavier weight or a font that has borrowed perhaps too much from Hadassah (I shan't call it an imitation, but I might once I've seen it properly).
It's not: here's a close-up:
As a small aside - there is (or was) a Hebrew edition of office, iirc, which handles the bi-directional troubles you have, though I'd have thought that by now they should have integrated that into the regular office suit..
I suspect I can get around the bidirectional problems thing by reverting the whole document to be left-to-right (though that might give me problems if I try and print it out in booklet form). This is more the problem that concerns me in Windows:
(That or the traditional font vowel problems under Linux.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 02:00 pm (UTC)By second text I meant second "modern" text as in Singer's Prayerbook. I should try not to write this sort of reply after midnight - I end up all confuzzled.
I only ever had to use nikkud in once I started studying design, and so only with software such as freehand, indesign and photoshop. Those handle nikkud perfectly, both in windows and in mac, so I'm no help there, sorry.
It's been a while since I looked for online info about Hebrew typography, and I don't have time to go search now either, but last July it was certainly lacking.
Perhaps in three weeks, once I'm done with my term presentations I can scan a few pages from my font catalogue, which also explains a bit about the history. It only has fonts up to the 70's, and Hebrew typography is in a golden age of sorts which started around the mid 90's I'd say, but most modern typographers have websites one can look up.
Koren font dates from the same time as Hadassah, and draws most of its inspiration from 16th century Italian fonts and Sepharadic writing.
Here is a digitised version which I think was made by a foundry.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 12:03 pm (UTC)Well, that's not either.
Sing'er's and Koren
Date: 2008-08-10 04:14 pm (UTC)Secondly, the new edition of the Singer's Siddur was done in a version of Hadasa by Fontbit called FbHadasaNew. The choice was made because people has become used to the typeface of Artscroll (which is a slightly modified version of Hadasa).
Re: Sing'er's and Koren
Date: 2008-08-10 04:33 pm (UTC)I never said this was a perfect example of the font, just that it is one.
Re: Singer's and Koren
Date: 2008-08-10 04:44 pm (UTC)I guess I should create a sample of the real typeface for you to link to.
Re: Singer's and Koren
Date: 2008-08-10 04:53 pm (UTC)In fact, copy right being what it is, I doubt it's possible to claim any copy of Koren is illegal. Even copy right has its limitations, you know.
Re: Singer's and Koren
Date: 2008-08-10 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 01:13 am (UTC)I've been using openoffice for that sort of complicated Hebrew thing with success, but in xp, so my experience probably isn't all that relevant.
What do you think of Koren's font, that they use for - well, more or less everything they do?
no subject
Date: 2008-02-08 12:51 pm (UTC)Well, aside from the fact
I've been using openoffice for that sort of complicated Hebrew thing with success, but in xp, so my experience probably isn't all that relevant.
And I'm not allowed to install software on the machines at work. Did you find, though, that you escaped this problem?
What do you think of Koren's font, that they use for - well, more or less everything they do?
I don't know who or what Koren is, or what their font is.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 09:26 pm (UTC)getting type to work
Date: 2008-08-10 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 09:25 pm (UTC)yedid nefesh
Date: 2008-08-10 04:17 pm (UTC)Re: yedid nefesh
Date: 2008-08-10 04:51 pm (UTC)I'm aware of that—I pointed it out in my first paragraph.
Both the Koren and Rinat Yisrael nusach ashkenaz siddurim feature this correct version.
That they might, but I suspect it's going to take the majority of the Ashkenazi world a lot longer to switch. Who cares if it's right or wrong? We've been doing it this way for centuries, so it's hallowed by time!
Re: yedid nefesh
Date: 2008-08-10 05:20 pm (UTC)Siddur and fonts
Date: 2009-10-12 06:40 pm (UTC)But for my second product of producing a siddur with nikkud for my mobile phone, I created a new program that I called pags, which is only available at:
http://live.gnome.org/Vala/PangoCairoSample
It takes a utf8 text and translates it to png files that may be copied to the mobile phone. You can see one such siddur at:
http://imagic.weizmann.ac.il/~dov/Hebrew/index.html
For this to work well, you really need a good quality font with opentype tables. I started automizing this process in:
http://imagic.weizmann.ac.il/~dov/Hebrew/AutoNikud/
but I never finished. My plan was to automatically create new version of the Culmus fonts with nice nikkud placement.
Anyhow, hope my ranting might be of interest. Good luck!
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