What Mikraos Gedolos is
Mikraos Gedolos is a Chumash in which the pasuk and its translation stand at the top of the page, and the commentaries are arranged below them in tiers. Every dibbur of every commentary has to stand on the page of the pasuk it explains, and when one commentary runs on, the others have to share the space that is left. It is one of the hardest books to typeset by hand.
- At the top
- The pesukim, with the translation beside them: Onkelos, or another targum.
- The first tier
- Rashi, sometimes with another commentary beside it.
- The tiers below
- Ramban, Ibn Ezra, Sforno and the other commentaries you chose, each in its own font and size.
- Commentary on a commentary
- Sifsei Chachamim on Rashi, or a commentary of your own on one of the meforshim.
How Ariach lays out the page
Ariach’s typesetting engine chooses the page breaks of the whole parsha at once. Each commentary’s first note on the page’s lines starts on it, and the following ones continue to the next page only when the page is full. A commentary with little left gets all of it, and the rest share the space equally.
When the text comes from Otzaria, the Masoretic marks are read too: pesuchah and setumah, kesiv and kri, as styles you can design. Chapter headings are set by themselves, and each weekly parsha is built as one run of pesukim.
From the Chumash to the print file
Bring in the text
A Chumash from Otzaria with the commentaries you choose, or your own text from Word, with each commentary in a file of its own.
Choose a layout and design
Which commentary in each tier, in which font and size. You can also tell the Assistant: “add the Ramban from Otzaria”.
Go over the pages
A page that didn’t work out is flagged with the reason. Typesetter’s instructions are anchored to words, and stay in place after corrections too.
Download a print PDF
Identical to the pages on screen, with bleed and crop marks.
For a Gemara with Rashi and Tosafos around the text: typesetting in Tzuras HaDaf.
