DAS Blog

Why the $%#& did Microsoft Word have to develop some way for us non-Hebrew keyboard users to be able to use different typefaces and everything with Hebrew? Why didn't they leave well enough alone?

Back in the old days, you could get a "Hebrew font" and hunt and peck with the keyboard (and try to remember to think "backwards") and just type out Hebrew characters (or insert them as special characters from your regular font). Sure it was laborious to type everything backwards from how it's done in Hebrew. Sure it was annoying if you wanted to have a different typeface but couldn't find a new, cheap font.

But it worked, and reliably so.

The way things work now, though, I can happily cut and paste Hebrew into my Word Document from the intertubes or wherever. And I have a choice of typeface (between Times New Roman and well, Times New Roman is the only one which reliably looks good). But then, when I close my document and re-open it the next day (or an hour later), Word has decided to reorder the Hebrew letters. Why does Word change things without you telling it to change them (other than useful, and easily reversible automatic corrections)? I want to pretend like I'm frum and have B"H at the top of the page -- how come Word keeps changing it to H"B? Did I tell it to change directions? Why the #@$% doesn't it keep things the way I enter them or at least be consistent about what it does?

Update -- I'm having worse problems with some other Hebrew text. I was just about to e-mail Microsoft and ask them for support, but evidently, after a limited period, they start to charge you $50 (fifty #@$%in' bucks! WTF?!?) everytime you ask for support. So I'd have to pay $50 to get an answer as to why the #@$% when I paste in some Hebrew text and it looks one way when I paste it in, another way when I scroll down and back up and yet a third way when I re-open the document?

What the @#%$ was wrong with just providing Hebrew fonts/special characters like I seem to recall having in the "old days"?