[B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 15 - greek fonts and online teaching

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 16 02:45:01 EDT 2011


I would most seriously recommend switching everything to unicode.  It does not 
matter then what font the student decides to use since unicode is unicode is 
unicode.  The only difference is in the appearance of the letters though all 
letters in whatever unicode font is chosen are recognizably the same letter 
which is not true with legacy fonts such as SPIonic or (What was it?)  Galatia 
SIL?  While the size of the unicode font files are perhaps larger than those 
of the legacy fonts, they are not so much larger as to be prohibitive.  Change 
once and you don't need to change again.

 george
gfsomsel 


… search for truth, hear truth, 
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, 
defend the truth till death.


- Jan Hus
_________ 




________________________________
From: Shirley Rollinson <rollinsondr at yahoo.com>
To: susan at read-the-bible.org
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Fri, April 15, 2011 4:01:12 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Fw: B-Greek Digest, Vol 100, Issue 15 - greek fonts and 
online teaching

Dear Susan,
I've taught online for a number of years, at a college which has been through 
several versions of WebCT, Blackboard, and other "Learning Platforms". As a 
teacher you're at the mercy of whatever package the  Instructional Technology 
folk decide to try for this year - and next year there will probably be an 
"upgrade" HA.
However - there is a work-around, which will save you a lot of re-writing, 
re-coding, and wasted time. If you set up your own web-site, with the permanent 
resources you need for classes, you can keep it under your control (and retain 
copyright if need be). Then just use whatever package the Institution decides 
upon, and put up some introductory pages, pointing the students to the (real) 
course on your own website. That way you get to choose your methods of 
presentation, and can have your material available for all on the 'Net - not 
just the students currently enrolled in Blackboard.
If you use XHML and CSS (easier to learn and universally applicable, not like 
the package-ware of Bb and WebCT) you can change your Greek fonts just by 
changing the specification in the CSS file whenever you decide to change fonts. 

It does mean that your viewers need to downlaod and install the same Greek font 
that you are using. However, if students are going to be sending in assignments 
written in Greek, you will all need to have some agreed-upon Greek font used by 
all in the class.
I've taught Greek with an online component (mainly in-class, but with online 
support) for over 10 years. Next semester I'll be trying a completely online 
section. 

Until now I've found SPIonic.ttf to be one of the best fonts for general student 
use. It's small (25K) and in the public domain, thanks to James Adair. The 
students don't have problems downloading and using it and the keyboard is very 
intuitive. 

However, it does have problems with displaying and printing webpages - often 
putting a space between a vowel and a breathing. 

I've been considering going to a unicode font for webpages - which will mean 
that viewers will have to download and work with one of the gigantic unicode 
files. Some of my online students are on the rez - conditions are primitive, 
equipment minimal, and I know their technology is inadequate. So I'm probably 
going to stick with SPIonic for student word-processing assignments for now, try 
to do something with embedded fonts in .pdfs for printed resource materials, and 
start using unicode fonts on webpages.
Ain't computers wunnerful.
a bas la Blackboard :-)
thank you
Shirley Rollinson
==========
If anyone on this list is teaching online Greek using either "Moodle" or
"Blackboard" -- I'd be grateful if you would email me off-list and tell
me how you handle fonts; in particular, whether you use unicode, or a
truetype (old-style) font such as bwgrkl.  There are particular issues
with these courseware packages; I'm hoping to at least use some unicode
next year but would like to avoid pitfalls.  

Thanks!

Susan Jeffers


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