When displaying Hebrew square characters for Jewish Aramaic texts, many of the CAL pages depend on the UNICODE modules built into current browsers. Thus, you do not have to have any Hebrew font loaded into your system to view text in Hebrew. But you will need to use a relatively up-to-date browser (IE 5 DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY!). Some browsers do better than others, though. Internet Explorer 6.0.2 does a reasonably good job (with certain Hebrew fonts selected) displaying vowels, but older versions occasionally get confused displaying lengthy Hebrew texts and output code (such as #x05DE;) instead of the correct letter. (When that happens, there are some tricks you can try: reload the page -- or open a new window (i.e. type control-N. You may have to do it several times to convince IE you are serious!)
IE 6 often still has problems with the order of characters in Hebrew Unicode when numerals are involved, as in our variant indicators, and appear at the logical end of a physical line. Unfortunately, the various browsers keep leapfrogging each other when it comes to the correct way to display right-to-left fonts. Sometimes Firefox is best, and then in the next release it can louse things up subtantially, yielding to IE. Please experiment and use which ever browser works best for your and you particular usage habits.
FOR MAC OS X users: The Safari browser from Apple and Netscape 7.1 and Firefox browsers
work beautifully for UNICODE HEBREW and display our Syriac nicely as well. (For UNICODE SYRIAC see below!).
(For info on how to install a font in OSX click here.)
BUT SAFARI USERS ON OS X beware! Safari has a notorious bug in scrolling within frames. To solve this problem, simply open the window you are working on "in a new window" (right click or control-click on the link) instead of in the right hand frame.
Another resource for Mac assistance is by Alan Wood. You are strongly urged to use the most up-to-date version of the operating system and browser! (Even so, we've noticed that Safari can still get confused and display the occasional #x05DE type code. Use the reload button once or twice if this occurs.)
On older Macs, Netscape is great for voweled text when using older versions of Netscape on Older MAC OS's. Unfortunately, the older browsers, when used on OS 9 and OS X, no longer do things so well for any Hebrew unicode right now. For those folks we have installed a display system for Hebrew text using a lower ASCII Hebrew. First install our fonts from CAL MAC FONTS PAGE. Then start your search from our special Targum Search PAGE for MAC users and bookmark it for future reference!
UNDER WINDOWS the sequence consonant holem (no waw) displays too spacey with the unicode fonts that ship with windows. (So, too, vowels with the dageshed consonants.) I suggest you try the superior public domain CARDO or SBL HEBREW unicode fonts. When you do that, be sure to set Netscape to "allow document to use other fonts", under the menu command: edit->preferences->appearance->fonts. (For "Firefox/Mozilla" you have to do the reverse, i.e. tools/options/general/fonts&colors: make sure "always use my fonts" is NOT CHECKED!) Once either or both of these fonts is installed, they will be automatically selected by our html pages.
SYRIAC UNICODE: Those fortunate to have an XP class computer or newer--OR A MODERN LINUX SYSTEM--should avail themselves of the wonderful Syriac Unicode fonts of the "Meltho" system and choose the appropriate radio button on the text select screen. For access to Meltho visit: BethMardutho.org. Please pay attention to the user manual that comes with the fonts if you have problems. The Firefox 2 browser works properly most of the time under Windows with Meltho shape shifting fonts, but occasionally loses its mind. When that happens, refreshing the page will usually clear the symptoms. IE is more consistently reliable with Meltho. (You may use the Meltho fonts under NT or 2000 and also MAC OS X, but you will not see proper contextual forms.) HOWEVER, Mac users may now copy and paste Syriac into the Mellel(TM) word processor and it will display properly!! FIREFOX 3 does not display Syriac for some reason on Mac OS X, but again, simply copying the little boxes that do show up to Mellel will solve the problem
For Mandaic and transliteration purposes, we strongly recommend the shareware font Code2000 used with IE (because Firefox 1.0.6 does not display the diacritic underdot correctly in that font while IE does; Firefox 2 seems to have solved the problem).
Thus, ideal CAL browsing systems should have Meltho, Code2000, SBLHebrew, and Cardo installed. The various web pages will choose the best font for displaying the kind of information you are looking at.