[Pkg-lyx-devel] Bug#823811: LyX: missing out-of-the box support for Hebrew

[Tzafrir Cohen]

Package: lyx
Version: 2.1.4-2
Severity: minor

Dear Maintainer,

I'm not much of a LaTeX / LyX user myself anymore, but decided to report
this following a discussion I had in a community forum recently.

When I try to use Hebrew with LyX and can either:


Use the default (pdflatex):
In that case Hebrew support is through babel. The fonts it points to are
a set of fonts not really available anywhere. At the time I packaged
Hebrew support for babel that included usage of the culmus fonts.

I guess some extra effort could be put into making the Culmus fonts the
default ones (the originals were a set of low quality fonts of dubious
legal status).


Use xelatex:
In that case Hebrew support is through polyglossia (and implicitly:
bidi). Works generally better. However:

* The LyX user interface still fails to "reverse" Hebrew. I would have
  expected a QT-based program to do that. This is an issue I would
  probably take upstream.

* Debian comes with several good font sets that have a good coverage of
  Hebrew, as well as many other scripts (for instance: Deja-Vu). Yet, I
  need to explicitly set the serif font of the document in order for
  documents with Hebrew texts to render. Can't the default be changed?

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: armhf

Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=he_IL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=he_IL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages lyx depends on:
ii  libboost-regex1.58.0    1.58.0+dfsg-5+b1
ii  libboost-signals1.58.0  1.58.0+dfsg-5+b1
ii  libc6                   2.22-7
ii  libenchant1c2a          1.6.0-11
ii  libgcc1                 1:5.3.1-14
ii  libmagic1               1:5.25-2
ii  libmythes-1.2-0         2:1.2.4-1
ii  libqtcore4              4:4.8.7+dfsg-6+b1
ii  libqtgui4               4:4.8.7+dfsg-6+b1
ii  libstdc++6              5.3.1-14
ii  lyx-common              2.1.4-2
ii  xdg-utils               1.1.1-1
ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1

Versions of packages lyx recommends:
ii  atril [pdf-viewer]           1.12.2-1
ii  dvipng                       1.14-2+b2
ii  elyxer                       1.2.5-1
ii  evince [pdf-viewer]          3.20.0-3
ii  fonts-lyx                    2.1.4-2
ii  ghostscript                  9.19~dfsg-1+b1
ii  imagemagick                  8:6.8.9.9-7+b2
ii  poppler-utils                0.38.0-3
ii  preview-latex-style          11.87-3+deb8u1
ii  psutils                      1.17.dfsg-2
ii  tex4ht                       20090611-3
ii  texlive-fonts-recommended    2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-generic-extra        2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-generic-recommended  2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-latex-extra          2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-latex-recommended    2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-science              2015.20160320-1

Versions of packages lyx suggests:
pn  chktex                                    <none>
pn  etoolbox                                  <none>
pn  gnuhtml2latex                             <none>
ii  groff                                     1.22.3-7
ii  inkscape                                  0.91-9
pn  latex2rtf                                 <none>
ii  librsvg2-bin                              2.40.15-1
ii  libtiff-tools                             4.0.6-1
ii  linuxdoc-tools                            0.9.71-2
pn  lyx-dbg                                   <none>
pn  noweb                                     <none>
ii  rcs                                       5.9.4-3
ii  sgmltools-lite                            3.0.3.0.cvs.20010909-19
ii  texlive-latex-recommended [latex-xcolor]  2015.20160320-1
ii  texlive-xetex                             2015.20160320-1
pn  writer2latex                              <none>
pn  wv                                        <none>

-- no debconf information