What is the secret to using Lyx with Hebrew?

[Micha Feigin]

On Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:23:33 +0200
Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/3/4 Maxim Kovgan <maxim.kvg at gmail.com>:
> > I used lyx by implementing the instructions from huji site about lyx.
> > what I got to was:
> > when I pressed F12 (IIRC), it *switched* language, both he->en and
> > en->he, depending on the current state.
> > I don't remember having to worry about anything else.
> >
> > I don't understand exactly what do YOU wish to achieve ?
> >
> 
> I would like to be able to switch languages in Lyx just like I do in
> any other application, that is, with the windows manager's shortcuts.
> In my current setup Lyx displays Hebrew as LTR when I switch
> languages. I must go back, highlight the Hebrew text, and select
> Hebrew from the languages list.
> 

That is not currently possible due to the latex requirement that it know the
current language of the block of code and not just the current character. If
you use xetex, still a bit of a pain under lyx though, it will put the text in
the right order inside words, but the words and alignment are are in the wrong
direction.

Lyx was moved to work with unicode internally so it may be possible to do it
implicitly in the future (change paragraph / text segment orientation
automatically). If I recall correctly though the reason lyx currently has it's
own keyboard switching short cut is due to two main reasons:
1. It is not possible to know on all platform what the current keyboard is,
just what the character is which made it a bit difficult to choose the language
2. latex doesn't work with general hebrew encodings so lyx needs to
control the input incoding (with widespread unicode support that is probably
changing though)