Software request - making Greek available on older systems.

Bible Study software, Unicode, Fonts, Keyboards, creating Web pages in Greek, and other software issues.
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Software request - making Greek available on older systems.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

For people in poorer and lesx developed parts of the world, where computer and phone technology is a few generations behind what is needed to display Greek properly. For me, and presumably for others, who can read Greek, when we see,
Titus 3:5 as displayed without the extended Greek characters wrote:οκ ξ ργων τν ν δικαιοσύν ν ποιήσαμεν μες, λλ κατ τν ατο λεον σωσεν μς, δι λουτρο παλιγγενεσίας κα νακαινώσεως πνεύματος γου,
we can still make sense of it to some degree or other.

For somebody in a poorer country or a disadvantaged area of the world or strata of society, who wants to read Greek, or who wants access to this forum, or to most of the other online resources that might allow (free) them to read, learn or go on with Greek, seeing the Greek with 1 in 6 characters missing might be a cause for taking an alternative choice in life.

From what I can see, there is a very simple solution. A webpage that downloads the Greek characters to the browser as they are needed, could itself open the B-Greek forum (or another useful website) and display it fully. If it was a browserside script, it would not be as costly for bandwidth as it would be as a serverside script.

At present, I can do that on my phone (without going to the step of rooting and possibly ruining it), by cutting the text from B-Greek, and pasting it into the search line of Katabiblon.com, then finger scrolling it across to read it. That option has only just recently become available now that Katabiblon has been updated and changed its format.

While even just suggesting that katabiblon.com option as a way to access B-Greek is step in the right direction towards achieving social justice and not allowing the gap between the haves and the have nots to preclude people from accessing online access New Testament Greek. For somebody, who eats 1 meal a day instead of 3 for a few months, so they can afford to buy a 10 or more year old model smart phone with internet access, perhaps just being able to cut and paste into katabiblon.com is satisfactory. Not in anyway condoning software piracy, but what I discovered from living in the hotel for a few months a couple of years ago is that one of the things left out of cutdown versions of Windows is the foreign fonts and extended character sets. Building a system as quickly as possibke, ooting from a LAN connection, or otherwise restoring the system to a default state using ghost files, requires an efficiency that can't afford "extras".

What I am requesting, is that an option be given to those presently excluded by socioeconomic disadvantage and the technical divide from participation in this forum, by copying / extracting or recomposing the script that katabiblon.com uses and put it somewhere that can be easily accessed. In the guidelines for use for B-Greek, under technical advice, something like, "If οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων τῶν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ ὧν ἐποιήσαμεν ἡμεῖς, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν αὐτοῦ ἔλεον ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς, διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως πνεύματος ἁγίου, displays as οκ ξ ργων τν ν δικαιοσύν ν ποιήσαμεν μες, λλ κατ τν ατο λεον σωσεν μς, δι λουτρο παλιγγενεσίας κα νακαινώσεως πνεύματος γου, then open B-Greek through letmereadextendedgreek.com or any other site. I think it would be too onerous to say, if your system doesn't display Greek properly, then buy an updated device.

Perhaps (or probably) nobody will ever use it, and if it is a very small adjunct to an existing site, with very little effect on the bandwidth. It is a very simple thing to do, with the possibility to have a large effect. The resources are there, all they need is to be able to be accessed.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Sounds like maybe the fonts we are using don't work on some devices.

Do these devices support Unicode? I'm guessing they aren't available on the browser tests that I typically use to look at font questions. Are these Android devices? It's about time that I upgrade to a new version of phpBB, maybe it's worth looking at fonts when I do that.

I'm not sure what else you are asking for.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Sounds like maybe the fonts we are using don't work on some devices.

Do these devices support Unicode? I'm guessing they aren't available on the browser tests that I typically use to look at font questions. Are these Android devices?
Yes. Android. The font on older devices do not have fonts with the full (extended) Greek character set. The fonts supplied are a subset of what is usually available on a computer, or the more recent Android devices.

Here are a few comparative pictures:
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Thus is the way that B-Greek displays on my phone.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

This is how katabiblon.com displays recently.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

This is how Blue Letter Bible displays.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

This is how a word document (technical vocabulary for Asclepiodotus, Tactica) displays on my phone too.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

This is how the New Testament displays from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America displays.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Embedded fonts allow fonts not inherent on the system to be displayed. The code to use is @font-face.

If you'd like an analogy, some websites act like pdfs, and bring their fonts with them, so they can display anything.

Here are some directions from http://www.onextrapixel.com/2011/05/03/ ... y-and-how/

I've got an idea what should be done to display Greek properly on older devices - adding those few lines in the picture - but I'm trying to find a way to do for all sites, not just ones like Katabiblon.com and Blueletterbible.com that embed the fonts themselves. That will make a lot more resources available to people in socioeconomic disadvantage.
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Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
Posts: 4158
Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
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Re: Software request - making Greek available on older syste

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:I've got an idea what should be done to display Greek properly on older devices - adding those few lines in the picture - but I'm trying to find a way to do for all sites, not just ones like Katabiblon.com and Blueletterbible.com that embed the fonts themselves. That will make a lot more resources available to people in socioeconomic disadvantage.
For B-Greek, I think the trick is to install a Unicode font that supports Polytonic Greek for at least one of these font families:

Code: Select all

Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
Stephen Hughes wrote:Embedded fonts allow fonts not inherent on the system to be displayed. The code to use is @font-face.
I can look into embedded fonts for the B-Greek site (when I get a little extra time, I'm swamped with a project and with some refugee work right now). I'll need help testing it, since the browser test software assumes more modern software.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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