A few months ago, I wrote a post (here) on how LaTeX was a suitable answer to doing Hebrew over Microsoft Word, especially in OS X. After a month or so of tinkering more deeply with LaTeX, I have come to appreciate its capabilities over that of Word. Granted, Mellel is another contender, but because I am not so familiar with Mellel, I will leave that up to others to comment. From what I can tell, Mellel has similar features to LaTeX, including the ability to take advantage of the capabilities of OpenType fonts.
I have included below a sample from the final version of my thesis (I rechecked all the Hebrew and Greek passages that I copied by hand, so I’m hoping there are no mistakes). I took to heart jamtuck’s comment (here) to do the MT and LXX in adjacent columns, and I was pleased with the result. So, thank you for the idea, jamtuck!
There are some other features I wish to point out with LaTeX that solidifies the choice of LaTeX over MS Word as a paper-preparation software. First is LaTeX’s ability to automatically resize the Hebrew and Greek fonts to match the surrounding text. This can be seen all throughout the sample file, but particularly on p. 66. My text font is a little smaller than Times New Roman, Palatino, etc., so the SBL Hebrew and SBL Greek fonts normally stand a little higher. However, with just the insert of an option, the Hebrew and Greek were scaled down appropriately. I could only imagine in Word that to change every Hebrew and Greek word would require a few clicks per word. Second, is the proper order of Hebrew that spans two lines, as seen towards the upper part of p. 30. There isn’t need to worry about whether a few lines of Hebrew will turn out correctly because LaTeX makes sure it does. In contrast, Word would flip do all sorts of gymnastics to my Hebrew. Third, the access to true small caps is not accessible in Word, at least as far as W2008 is concerned. Every occurrence of “MT” and “LXX” in my thesis is done in small caps as required by The SBL Handbook of Style. Word does have a way to generate small caps, but these are fake small caps, which I find lacking.
There are other points that I could make as to why LaTeX would be the way to go with biblical languages but I think these suffice. The only caveat I can give with LaTeX is that there is a steep learning curve, especially when one needs to modify the style files. On the bonus side, LaTeX and the bibliographic generator BibTeX are completely freeware.
I would like to hear from Word and Mellel users as to whether either of these programs have similar capabilities to the above points. My guess is that the WYSIWYG interface of Mellel, those who are serious about producing documents with proper Hebrew might be better off with it than with LaTeX.
JohnDave’s Thesis Sample with MT-LXX tables created in LaTeX
TeX was either the very first type-setting mark-up language, or close to it. By extension, LaTeX built upon TeX’s ability to do mark-up processing, gives you complete ability to completely to specify type-setting information including font use such that it renders consistently on any computer, every time.
Accordingly, where there are equations, music symbols, or other alphabets (such as Hebrew or Greek), use of a word processor leaves type setting rendering in the hands of the whims of the word processor itself, and the printer driver, whereas LaTeX leaves it in the hands of the author.
As you point out, there is a learning curve, but the investment is so worth the return. The strength of type-setting mark-up languages is the complete control it gives you as author, but one must invest the time ( really not much ) to learn the concepts. I personally cannot imagine trying to publish either math/science or biblical languages any other way.
There use to be a time (before the proliferation of word-processors) you could not publish at university without using TeX. The truly remarkable thing about TeX/LaTeX though, is that this invention was mostly a hobby for Donald Knuth (The Art of Computher Programming) simply because he didn’t like how the 2nd edition of his book looked when it was typeset.
This is my 256 cents worth of insight (google “Knuth reward check”).
John, you might be interested in LyX.
I think you meant πεπμω for μεμπω very early on the first page of the body!
Also, you need to be careful with accents: you say “The noun θεὸν is anarthrous…”. But a varia (the ὸ) accent can only occur in continuous text (as it is an oxia that isn’t followed by a pause), and so the quoted text should be “The noun θεόν is anarthrous…”.
Similarly in the next paragraph, which should read (because it shows this effect quite well):
The author once again decides to refer to μονογενής, but this time as μονογενὴς θεός”.
It might be that you don’t mind – and it’s probably quite a bit of work to change. But I’d hate you to have had a supervisor who minded, and to have annoyed him by accident.
Andrew: Thanks for that historical tidbit. That is pretty amazing that the TeX system was developed as a hobby. Like you, I’m having much difficulty going back to Word. What do you think about systems like QwarkXpress or InDesign? Probably overkill for something like this, eh? What do you think the strengths of Mellel are over LaTeX?
Thomas Larsen: Thanks for bringing up LyX. When I first began research TeX and its variants I came across LyX and gave it a try, but since I had already been engaged quite a bit with LaTex, I found that relearning LyX would be a bit time consuming. Now that I have more time, I’ll be sure to experiment around with it.
Simon Day: Egad! Thanks for pointing those things out. It will definitely be of help for when I enter a PhD program. I think I was actually a little lazy in reproducing accents in text that I did flip a few grave accents to acutes, accidentally conforming to the proper use. In a case like this where accents probably are not as crucial, do you think it would be better to leave out the accents markings (I can’t recall SBL Handbook requiring them)?
JohnDave: I have no direct experience with QwarkXpress and InDesign, though my mother-in-law is currently publishing a three volume book, and swears by InDesign for layout, so my opinion is somewhat spectulative.
That said, and without hiding my enthusiasm for LaTeX/TeX, I cannot see why someone would need QwarkXpress or InDesign if one understood TeX markup directly (because one could simply describe layout directly with the markup)
If one doesn’t understand TeX markup, the only way to layout something for publishing, without employing someone else to do it, would be to rely on a product such as InDesign. These products are good for what they do, but they hide a layer (from the author).
Also, I have no experience with Mellel, but it seems well reviewed as a word processor (that supports Middle-eastern languages))