In reply to VOLT (OT) feature programming for Hebrew:
Brian,
> If you decide now you are aiming at the secular market, you will save yourself a lot of effort.
Let me clarify this a little. Most modern Hebrew uses nikud rather sparingly. The main use is to make clear the meaning of words that would otherwise be ambiguous.
Another use is to make clear the pronunciation of foreign words.
I think you can assume there would only be a single nikud above or below a letter.
Nikud are also used in children's books but well known fonts would be chosen for this.
Religious books may require cantillation marks and getting that right is for specialists and masochists (!)
I would suggest you include all the combination glyphs in the Unicode as Hebrew is not a big font. Get your Hebrew to display well under True Type and Windows as Microsoft have done a passably good job to make this work without any special effort from you.
Later use Open Type to polish the font. For instance, resh with hirik looks better with the hirik directly under the leg of the resh.
Good luck, Mike