SBL Hebrew & MS Word & Mac OS X Snow Leopard

[BobStallman]

I'd like your opinion on the compatibility of SBL Hebrew & MS Word & Mac OS X Snow Leopard so that I can make a major purchasing decision.

To set this up, I am a professor who has happily used SBL Hebrew and MS Word for Windows for a long time, creating many many documents. My university supplies me with a good desktop computer with Windows Vista and MS Office. For portability and use in the classroom, however, I am considering purchasing a Macbook Air and locating my working files on the cloud (I use SugarSync). I know about Mellel but would greatly prefer to stay with MS Word not only for access to existing documents with Hebrew in them but also for sharing with students and colleagues.

Assuming that I am using the most current versions of both the Mac and Windows operating systems, MS Office on both platforms, and the most current release of SBL Hebrew, how successfull will I be able to do tasks such as the following:

1. Use MS Word for Mac to view, edit, and print a file created on my Vista computer?
2. Conversely, to use MS Word for Windows to do the same with files created on my Mac?

I know my way around Windows and MS Word for Windows fairly well, but would be relatively new to the Mac system as a whole.
Would this be opening the door to debilitating frustration and disappointment, or a move whose time has come?

Thanks so much,
Bob

[sbl_hooker]

Dear Bob,

Unfortunately, this is the most frustrating thing for those of us who use Macs but also wish to work with Unicode Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts.  The simple answer is that, even with the most recent version of Word, Unicode Hebrew (including SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL, etc.) will not work.  You might, on a good day after having performed the appropriate sacrifices, bee able to view a document that contains only consonants that was created on a Windows computer.  Vowels and diacritics, however, are a deal breaker.  Attempts at composition in Word for Mac, in my experience, only result in rage and temporary insanity.
This unfortunate reason for all of this is that Microsoft continues to use outdated code in their Office product (the one exception being the just-released Outlook).  OS X is perfectly capable of handeling the OpenType complex script layout that SBL Hebrew employs and has been at least since 10.5.  As such, there is nothing that SBL, Tiro, or anyone else can do to fix compatibility in Word.  Until Word is rewritten to include proper right-to-left support, this will continue to be an enormous frustration to those of us who use Macs but also need to deal with MS Office documents. 
Has anyone else here found any solutions that do not involve Mellel or Nisus Writer Pro?

Chris

[BobStallman]

Thanks, Chris

This information helps me to know what I'd be facing and is not a deal-breaker on buying a Mac...yet anyway.

I'm interested in hearing from others who have both kinds of computers concerning how they do word processing with SBL Hebrew, particularly those who have experience with running Windows Vista on a Mac through either Parallels Desktop or Bootcamp.

If this topic is too far afield for this forum I may be contacted directly at bob[dot]stallman[at]northwestu[dot]edu

Thanks again,
Bob

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