Hebrew vowel positioning

Question

Is there a way in LuaLaTeX (second best would be XeTeX) to finetune the positioning of Hebrew vowel signs? For some fonts if both vowels and cantillation marks are present, they might overlap, which should be avoided. I would need something similar as \skew in plain LaTeX.

Answer 1

Sure, you can do this. But first make sure:

1. You can't use a better font
2. You have correctly set up your font

Consider this example which only uses the SBL BibLit font, but with different open type settings. The correct output is only obtained when fontspec is passed Script=Hebrew,Contextuals=Alternate.

If you leave out Contextuals=Alternate, the furtive patah is wrong. If you leave out Script=Hebrew, everything is completely messed up.

But frankly, I would use a better font rather than manually moving things.

Note: I'd be surprised if the manually constructed word copies and pastes correctly.

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\sblgood{SBL BibLit}[Script=Hebrew,Contextuals=Alternate]
\newfontfamily\sblhalfbaked{SBL BibLit}[Script=Hebrew]
\newfontfamily\sblbad{SBL BibLit}
\begin{document}
\textdir TRT \pardir TRT

\sblgood
וְר֣וּחַ

\sblhalfbaked
וְר֣וּחַ

וְר֣וּח\kern -4.75pt  ַ

\sblbad
וְר֣וּחַ

ו\kern -2pt  ְ\kern 2pt
ר\kern -3.5pt  ֣\kern 3.5pt
ו\kern -2pt\lower 4pt\hbox{ ֺ}\kern -0.5pt
ח\kern -4.75pt  ַ
\end{document}