[B-Greek] Comparing Unicode fonts

Joseph Weaks j.weaks at tcu.edu
Sat Feb 5 12:18:05 EST 2005


On 2/5/05 2:28 AM, "Wieland Willker" <willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de> wrote:
>> Does anyone know of a Unicode Greek uncial font?
> 
> There is probably none.
> And it would probably be just wasting time to create one. The advantage
> of Unicode is that documents can be shared with others even when they
> don't have exactly the same font. But when you are using an Uncial font,
> your partner MUST have exactly this font otherwise the information about
> the Uncial is lost. So you can equally well use one of the existing
> Uncial fonts. JMHO.

On the contrary, this request highlights the power and versatility and
transferability of Unicode. You can have a Unicode text, which when using a
"regular" Unicode font that includes the Greek range, displays in miniscule.
However, if you then set the font of that same text to a specialized Unicode
Uncial Greek font, it would display it "as the majuscule manuscripts did".

You see, the character point for any Unicode character is not tied to a
precise character form. The Unicode character U+03B1 is the "lower case
alpha", but the form of that alpha is different in different periods and
manuscript traditions and fonts can be designed for a specific period. For
electronic purposes, that lower case alpha in a miniscule text is the same
character as that non-title case alpha in a majuscule text.

I have been putting together some Unicode pages myself and hope to begin
making them available soon.

Joe Weaks


**************************************************************
Rev. Joseph A. Weaks
Senior Minister, Bethany Christian Church, Dallas
Ph.D. (Cand.), Brite Divinity School, Ft. Worth
j.weaks at tcu.edu

The Macintosh Biblioblog  http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com
"All things Macintosh for the Bible Scholar"
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