[B-Greek] unicode for typing Greek
William Zeitler
william at faithfulbible.com
Fri Dec 24 11:35:14 EST 2004
TeX / LaTeX
-----------
Just FYI, an alternative is to use a text processing system called TeX
(pronounced 'tech'. The 'X' is really a chi). An almost universally used
extension of it is call LaTeX. It was originally designed for typesetting
mathematical and scientific literature -- and supports complex math
equations that may also include Greek letters. It also supports those
features you'd need in a technical article, thesis or book: intelligent
footnotes, bibliographies, etc. It's currently in widespread use in the
technical community -- including Linguistics, apparently. It's platform
independent -- supported by Unix/Linux, PC, Mac. And it's FREE! (Same
philosophy of free software as the Open Source movement, of which Linux is
an example.)
The input is a plain ascii file (this email is a plain ascii file) -- no
special keyboard required. TeX commands begin with '\' (if you want a '\'
you type '\\'). Greek characters are entered by entering (then exiting)
'math mode' with a '$' plus the TeX 'commands' for the letters:
$\Epsilon\nu \alpha\rho\chi\eta \eta\nu \omicron
\lambda\omicron\iota\omicron\varsigma$
(Note that \Epsilon gives you uppercase, \epsilon lowercase.) Native LaTeX
supports accents also, except for the rough breather, which I'm sure is
available as an add-on 'package' if I looked. (There are a zillion of these
packages.)
There are also packages that specifically support Greek, which allow you to
enter longer passages of Greek more easily by switching to a 'Greek
environment' (\begin{greektext}...\end{greektext}) and using the specified
transliteration scheme.
The usual file output format is PDF or PostScript. You can output HTML also.
See http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/latex4ling// for a linguistics
oriented site about LaTeX.
See http://www.math.metu.edu.tr/~dpierce/language/Greek/Greek.html for
ancient Greek specific.
Or type 'Tex Latex' into Google, or 'Tex Latex Greek' for a long list of
resources. I use it, and would be happy to help as I am able (I'm no guru,
but I use it and it's working well for me.)
Peace,
william zeitler
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