A different font for single characters?

Question

A vernacular translator wants to show a Hebrew letter at the beginning of each section in Psalm 119. The font they use for their language doesn’t include Hebrew letters. Is there a way to use a Hebrew font for single characters like that as a heading in a vernacular text?

For example: They want to have the first section heading be: א Alep

John

Answer 1

You need to choose a marker for this which isn’t used for anywhere else - the marker \qa is the way to go, I think. Then in custom.sty, you can specify a font for this marker:

\Marker qa

\Fontname Charis

(or whatever font you choose - several Unicode fonts have Hebrew characters included)

Now \qa is a paragraph marker. If you want to mark only the Hebrew character (and not the word “Alef”) in a different font, it’s probably best to define a custom character style, for example:

\Marker heb

\Endmarker *heb

\Name heb - Hebrew

\StyleType Character

\OccursUnder qa

\Fontname Charis

For more information on stylesheets, see “What styles can be specified in a stylesheet?” in PT help.

Paulus+Kieviet

Comments

For the hebrew letters one could use the USFM 3 marker \qac ...\qac*, which is a

Marker to indicate the acrostic letter within a poetic line.
(Poetry — Unified Standard Format Markers 3.0.0 documentation)

Please note, the hebrew letter might jump “behind” the USFM markup visually (it’s logically enclosed, though):

---

Yes it will have this unexpected appearance, but will Print and display in formatted view correctly.

Answer 2

Thank you! Kind of a steep curve for me, but I think I can figure it out.
John L’s wife