[B-Greek] Re: Unicode for typing Greek

gfsomsel at juno.com gfsomsel at juno.com
Thu Dec 9 13:03:16 EST 2004


On Thu, 09 Dec 2004 10:49:12 -0600 "Jeffrey B. Gibson"
<jgibson000 at comcast.net> writes:
> 
> 
> Mark Goodacre wrote:
> 
> > We've been having some discussion of this issue in the 
> biblioblogs
> > too;  one thing that got the discussion going there was an 
> experience
> > I had with a session at the SBL at which one of the speakers had
> > produced a nice powerpoint presentation with lots of Greek in it, 
> but
> > then he discovered that it would not show up on the PC onto which 
> the
> > disk had been loaded.  If he'd been using unicode, the problem 
> would
> > not have arisen.  (Also he could have embedded his font -- that 
> would
> > also have solved the problem).
> >
> > On the question of how difficult all this is, I remember feeling 
> that
> > way a year or two ago.  But one tip that needs underlining is 
> Doug's
> > concerning the unicode classical Greek inputter at
> > http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/letters_table_caretpos2.htm, a 
> good
> > way of working with unicode Greek.  I think Randall suggested 
> that
> > this is a "point and click", but actually you can type into this
> > facility without trouble, and you can use it off-line.
> 
> So what does one do to get the Greek into a document?  Is it simply 
> a matter
> of cutting what one types in the display box and pasting it into 
> one's
> document?
> 
> Yours,
> 
> Jeffrey
> --
> 
> Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
> 
> 1500 W. Pratt Blvd. #1
> Chicago, IL 60626
> 
> jgibson000 at comcast.net
> 
> 
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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_____________________

When I use polytonic Greek unicode, I do it with a unicode wordprocessor
(GlobalWriter -- www.unitype.com).  I can switch from English to Greek to
Hebrew and back to English with no problem.  It doesn't have the niceties
of some other wordprocessors such as superscript, subscript, and some
other things, but I can then paste it into Word and format it as I
please.  If what has been said regarding the Greek keyboard in Windows xp
is the case (I can't say since I'm not using xp), then it should be easy
to type it directly into any document once the keyboard is mastered.  I
do sometimes switch to Greek in Windows now using <alt-lft shift> if it's
not going to be a matter of entering breathings and accents.  To do this
you must first install the Greek keyboard.

In answer to Wieland's question (which Randall answered adequately, but
which could be elaborated), the keyboard mapping for the various fonts
you mentioned is different to a greater or lesser degree which means that
you can't simply reformat your Greek from one font to another but must
alter what was entered to present the same letters in a different font. 
This is not necessary with unicode.  All you need to do is to take
A-Greek and reformat it as B-Greek or C-Greek, etc.  The keyboard mapping
is the same for every font face.

george
gfsomsel



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