[B-Greek] Re: Comparing Unicode fonts

Joseph Weaks j.weaks at tcu.edu
Wed Feb 9 18:15:41 EST 2005


Before a couple responses, first an invitation. There will always be
"early-adopters" and "previous-method-appreciators". No one needs to
proselytize each other. It is, of course, understandable to attempt to
convince our colleague that it's not as hard as you might think.
Coincidentally, last night I began a first in a series of articles on the
Macintosh Biblioblog ( http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com )designed to
introduce scholars to Unicode, and in time, walk them through a change over
to Unicode at their speed. While not particularly helpful for someone as
computer savvy as Wieland, the opening article is purely conceptual and
applies to all operating systems.

Now, for a couple responses:

On 2/9/05 3:46 AM, "Wieland Willker" <willker at chemie.uni-bremen.de> wrote:
> It is possible to switch keyboards. That is not the problem. But I doubt
> that you can type fluently using this keyboard. Can you?
> ... But I feel uncomfortable to be
> dependent on some obscure download (from an AOL page), which has no real
> documentation and where I don't know how long it will be available...Currently
no "official" tools are available.

On the contrary, this bleak assesment is rather off. It is becoming VERY
easy to create Unicode keyboards, and a number of custom solutions will be
available soon. A keyboard layout "that you can type fluently" with is
surely available. I, myself, am soon to publish 4 Unicode Keyboards for OS X
that mimic other very familiar layouts, including the national Greek layout
that I've been bugging Randall Buth for input on.
As for such a thing being "official", not sure what you mean. Would
offerings such as mine be deemed "official" if I charged $45? I'd be happy
to. :)

> Regarding the Uncial font Joseph Weaks writes:
>> 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.
> 
> But you see, the information (Uncial) is lost. Why do I use an Uncial
> font? To display some specialty of the Uncial. So, a display of some
> minuscule font is of no value.

I don't understand at all what you're saying. Please clarify. Do you mean
that an ideal Uncial text only uses caps?
Perhaps a comment of mine in an offlist followup discussion with another
Bgreek member might help clarify what I was saying:

"With such a font, you could take a snippet of Greek text you get from any
source, your bible software, from a web source, etc., and then decide to
view it as an Uncial text.  Just switch to your Uncial font and there you
have it. The Uncial font could even have the glyph for space U+0020 as a
non-space for the full effect. If not, a simple removal of all spaces is
easy enough.
You could go about it a more custom way, of course. You could have a text
intended for Uncial use/display written entirely in the U+0391 to U+03A9
capital Greek letter range, and use any Unicode font, or perhaps one whose
character forms in that range alone are Uncial-like forms. There's nothing
WRONG with doing it that way, but it is a more custom (=non-universal)
solution."

Cheers,
Joe

**************************************************************
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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