I think i've finally got my head around apt and packaging a little bit and managed to make a one click install for the hebrew fonts, input method and mohammed sameers arabic plugin. There are a couple of bugs (as always) but I'm working on ironing them out and would appreciate people letting me know if this method works for them on os2008.

Ive tried this on N800/OS2008 from a clean flash and it seemed to work well, however I take no responsibility for any breakage that may occur on your device if you try this BETA installer and packages.

That said, heres the link:




The one click install should add the hebrew repository and the arabic repository and then install hebrew fonts (culmus), hebrew input method and arabic input method. It will then ask to reboot your device. Once your device has rebooted you can read hebrew websites and can access hebrew input as follows:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
BUG: You need to install the following two files directly from the web browser to fix a maemo bug that doesn't show the language name of any extra languages installed and just shows () instead. If you dont perform this step you will still get two new languages but they will both be named (). The first is the hebrew and the second is arabic. To get the language names working, the files you need to install (just click these links in your n8x0 browser):

Firstly:

http://gplsystems.com/apt/pool/main/....1-2_armel.deb

and

http://gplsystems.com/apt/pool/main/....1-2_armel.deb

For more information on this bug see: http://foolab.org/node/1720
YOU MUST REBOOT AFTER INSTALLING THESE TWO FILES FOR THEM TO WORK
------------------------------------------------------------------

Onwards to using the hebrew input:

1. Open the virtual keyboard and select the menu button (bottom left)
2. Select Tools -> Settings and then open the languages tab on the dialog that appears
3. You should be able to select he_IL as a second language and click OK
4. Open the virtual keyboard and select the menu button -> Language -> he_IL
5. Open the virtual keyboard and select the menu button -> Input Method -> Keyboard(Arabic)
6. You should be able to type in hebrew!

To switch back to english just select Tools->Language->English and switch back to hebrew in the same way.

I hope this works for others, please provide feedback so I can improve the packages and fix any bugs. These are my first packages and I only just learn how to set up a repository so its likely there are some problems still to be fixed.

Thank you very much on this Hebrew Install GOOD WORK nice working on my Nokia N800 perfect !!!!

Nice! Took me ages to get my head around it glad it finally works

Got inverse decoding in Fbreader html text. Help!

I successfuly installed the hebrew package. However I have eencoutered
the following problems:
1. My english keboard changed from the standard os2008 keybord.
Not only the layout changed, but also the shift key is now locked
until I press it again like it used to be in os2007. How can I get the
os2008 english keyboard back?
2. If i use xournal, the hebrew font is too small. When I cange to Aharony
24 for example, the text disappears beyond the left margin and only
appears after a few words have been typed.
3. I am not able to see hebrew html in fbreader.
4. In maemopas or notes text works well even in large font.
5. If I don't use xournal how can i convertbtext to pdf?

Thank you for your work.

nothing.. absolutely nothing.. i tried manually and with this one click install but nothing,i can't even read hebrew.. why every damn app or doesn't matter what cool thing u do is always for os2008? what about the people who have 770 with os2006 or os2007 he? it's always the most coolest things for n800,this sucks,i give up with this ****

A few suggestions:

1. Shift in him-arabic - I changed the source a but to make the shift act as in standard keyboard, rather than a lock. I am not good a making packages, so you need to download
http://www.arava.co.il/matan/770/heb/him_arabic.so
and copy it to /usr/lib/hildon-input-method and then run hildon-im-recache (do this while him-arabic is not the selected input method).

2. About hebrew support in fbreader (and maybe some other applications) - you should install more-gconv-modules. This will still leave the RTL problem. I wrote a patch for BiDi support in maemo: http://www.arava.co.il/matan/770/heb/fb-0.8.1-bidi.diff
but it is for an old version and probably won't apply correctly to current release.

I would now ask about how to use an external keyboard to type hebrew. I found an application kbdd that works on the maemo platform, but, how can I teach it hebrew keymaps?
http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/kbdd

Hello,
thanx for your post..... I can read now arabic on my n800 but when I select the arabic input-methode I just see a black arae on the virsual keyboard and np thing els.
I have tried to copy him_arabic.so to /usr/lib/hildon-input-method but I couldn't.
How can I get the arabic letters???

I had the same problem, with the blank keyboard in hebrew. My solution was to copy he_IL.vkb file to /usr/share/keyboards/
to see if you are missing the arbic .vkb file, please type in xterm:
ls /usr/share/keyboards/
and press enter.

I still have a problem with my fingerboard which shows russian fonts instead of hebrew. I have converted the he_IL.vkb file to xml, but the xml file didn't come out right, so no luck. the vkb file came from the maemo "how to view hebrew" page so if someone has a newer version that would be great.