Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.086 August 18, 1995 1) Nota Bene [correction] (Zachary Baker) 2) Hebrew Word Processors for Yiddish (Avrom Yitzkhok Blair) 3) Yiddish fonts (Rudi Roth) 4) Oxford summer school problems (Rudi Roth) 5) Iosif Vaisman's Virtual Shtetl (Morrie Feller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 95 16:44:41 PDT From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu Subject: Nota Bene (correction) In an earlier posting (5.084), I wrote, "As a word processor, Nota Bene is far from perfect -- no spell check..." In my haste, I neglected to qualify that. I should have written "no *Yiddish* spell check"; N.B. does have an English spell check and the Lingua manual states that "optional spelling dictionaries are available for a number of European languages (French, Spanish, Italian, and German). Additional dictionaries are under development." A few years ago, there was talk at the National Yiddish Book Center, of developing a Yiddish spell check for Nota Bene, but I believe that idea is not being pursued at present. Zachary Baker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 16:46:25 -0400 (EDT) From: ablair@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu Subject: Hebrew Word Processors for Yiddish I have tried a number of WP's for Hebrew to be used for Yiddish, including an add-on to Word Perfect, which I found to be, at best, horrible. The most satisfactory program, and the one that I am using now is Dagesh, made by Kivun (Jerusalem), and distributed by Davka, 7074 N.Western Avenue; Chicago, IL phone: 1-800-621-8227. Call and ask for their catalogue. Dagesh has all the nekudos (althgough the pasakh in pasakh tvay yudn is slightly off center, it really looks OK. It is not perfect, as it is quirky and cranky, especiaal when you try to mix 2 or more languages, but it is the best I've seen. If there is another that is better, please let me know so I can give it a whirl. Allan (Avrom Yitzkhok) Blair 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Aug 95 13:13 GMT From: rothr@infomail.infonet.com Subject: Yiddish fonts In complement to the information on Yiddish fonts and the request from Brenda Fayerman, I can now confirm that the macro's I made earlier in WinWord6 using the WinGreek 19 shareware now work very well and allow any Yiddish character combination (in addition to the standard hebrew character combinations already available in Wgreek). In fact I assigned most of the specific Yiddish signs, including correct spacing of double yud with patach, as TTF's (True type fonts allowing correct screen views and printing) and gave them a keyboard assigment that is quite logical. It is a-"home-made" solution for which you need Wingreek 19, but useable for anyone that accepts to learn a little on macro's in WinWord6 and I could send the WinWord6 template on a diskette or upload it somewhere if there is interest. The only drawback I have is that the end of line or carriage return you need some attention to avoid that the next word comes on the previous line instead of the next, but with my speed of typing (slow) this does not involve too much effort. The major advantage is that it is using an existing wordprocessor (one of the 2 most important for the moment) and allows any other kind of operation with it. Rudi Roth Belgium 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 15 Aug 95 10:54 GMT From: rothr@infomail.infonet.com Subject: Oxford summer school problems I wonder if some Mendelniks have been at the Oxford Summer school this year. I registered for a 2 weeks (on 4) of their yiddish summer course as well as a two weeks room at a college for me and my wife (she wanted to improve her english at another school over there). Unfortunately, due to some health conditions popping up, it was advisable, to stay close to our home base and I cancelled the course one month before my arrival. Big was my surprise to recieve ar only reaction one month later to have my Visa card and my bank account debitted for an amount of USD 3000, that was the double of what I asked for. I spent hours on the phone as well as several faxes around to correct the situation on the bank, Visa etc... However, I was not finished regarding surprises: the Yiddish Institute refused to refund any money for the 2 weeks, because they pretended they had to pay the rooms at the colleges, and refused me to give any assistance on that matter. I had according to them to accept this as a "fait-accompli", which involves they still claim me an amount of USD 2000 for no services neither goods rendered. Faxes, telephone, neither registered letters did not help. The advance I paid to another institute in Oxford for my wife's english course was fully refunded, without any queries from my side. Without wanting to go in more details about the serious financial problems and embarassements I had over the last two weeks with my Visa card, bank account and subsequent problems with several payments blocked (this all due to the completely wrong non-authorised debit by Oxford Institute for Yiddish studies from my Visa account), I would like to receive by E-mail some feedback from those mendelniks that attended the course. I still hope that the above problem is only an organisationnal problem of them in running this course for the first time and will therefor be corrected and that I do not need to make use of the documents and the full legal file I have build up mean-while. I must also confess that after E-mailing with some mendelniks, I found out that there has been a lot of correspondence going on about the Oxford institute before I joined Mendele. I regret not having checked it before, because that could have avoided these problems. I would also not have posted on Mendele the dates and information about the course if I had known there was some contention about the institute. Anyhow and thanks to this experience, in the future, I will refrain going to "exotic" places for doing yiddish and stay very quietly at the University of Brussels continuing the normal course and the financially-save summer events. Rudi Roth Belgium 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 1995 12:12:28 -0700 (MST) From: feller@indirect.com Subject: Iosif Vaisman's Virtual Shtetl Back in Mendele 5.071, Noyekh mentioned Iosif Vaisman's Virtual Shtetl, and he told how wonderful it was. I am here to second that motion. I accessed it, and I can truly say that every Mendelyaner with access to Netscape, or any other gateway to WWW, should by all means visit this remarkable site. My thanks to Noyekh for bringing it to my attention. In case you don't have the address handy, it is: http://sunsite.unc.edu/yiddish/shtetl.html Morrie Feller Phoenix ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.086