Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

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Thomas Dolhanty
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Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

In the course of my efforts to gather together a larger and reliable list of infinitives, I have discovered that some of the output from BibleWorks 9 does not match similar output from other systems. For example, an export from BW containing the Greek character "ά", shows that character as a Unicode Character 'GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA' (U+1F71), when I expect Unicode Character 'GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS' (U+03AC). If I type from my Greek Polytonic keyboard I get the Tonos with expected U+03AC, and also from the Perseus data base I get the U+03AC. So also with Logos. The two outputs look the same, but, of course, search engines see them as different.

In checking this out a bit more carefully, I have learned that some of the BW Greek character mapping is now deprecated - at least that's how I understand it. Here is the description which I found helpful, and a table of deprecated and replacement Unicode values:
Because at an early stage the Unicode standard provided only for monotonic Greek and the characters for polytonic Greek were added later, the current standard contains duplication of a number of characters on the now-abandoned assumption that the tonos printed on modern Greek vowels is distinct from the acute accent printed on ancient Greek vowels. (There have in fact been some fonts that make these two accents appear slightly differently.) This is now a deprecated distinction, and it is recommended that the duplicate characters be unified under the code point in the Greek block and that the duplicate code points in Greek Extended not be used.
This is quoted from: http://apagreekkeys.org/technicalDetails.html

I contacted BW and they provided me with a text table which allows you to remap your BW Unicode Greek output. All you have to do is reassign the values in the text file, and then place that file in the BW directory. I have edited the file, and placed it in my directory, and it seems to work fine. I have not tested it exhaustively yet.

For anyone who wishes to use it, I have attached a copy of that file (bwgrk2unicode.txt). There were perhaps 7 or 8 characters that had to be reassigned. I have also attached the original file from BW, an Excel macro which will convert existing BW output, and a corrected XML file of the infinitives for verbs occurring 10 times or more often in the GNT ('corrected', of course, by replacing deprecated characters).

Now that I have files that will talk to each other - my BW output and a larger file from Perseus which Jonathan provided - I will start to work on checking output against output from different sources.
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Paul-Nitz
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Paul-Nitz »

There is an explanation of the duplicate vowels here: http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Greek ... ted_vowels .

In short, the duplication is all acute accented vowels. A full list is below.

LIST
Column A = Extended
Column B = Basic
Column A = Extended code
Column B = Basic code

ά_____ά_____1F71_____03AC
έ_____έ_____1F73_____03AD
ή_____ή_____1F75_____03AE
ί_____ί_____1F77_____03AF
ό_____ό_____1F79_____03CC
ύ_____ύ_____1F7B_____03CD
ώ_____ώ_____1F7D_____03CE
Ά_____Ά_____1FBB_____0386
Έ_____Έ_____1FC9_____0388
Ή_____Ή_____1FCB_____0389
Ί_____Ί_____1FDB_____038A
Ό_____Ό_____1FF9_____038C
Ύ_____Ύ_____1FEB_____038E
Ώ_____Ώ_____1FFB_____038F
ΐ_____ΐ_____1FD3_____0390
ΰ_____ΰ_____1FE3_____03B0
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Stephen Hughes »

If someone wanted to find further equivalences in two different languages and make them the same, then the Greek omicron (without accentuation) could be subsituted for the English letter "o", or if we follow this example of substituting the more modern for the ancient, the English letter "o" could be used for the Greek letter omicron.

I think those graphically similar characters - in polytonic and monotonic Greek - are functionally quite different.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

Paul Nitz wrote:There is an explanation of the duplicate vowels here: http://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/Greek ... ted_vowels .

In short, the duplication is all acute accented vowels. A full list is below.
This is exactly the same list as the one I cited, except that the list I used includes 3 additional characters beside the acute accents - 1) Greek question mark (Latin semicolon) 2) Greek colon or high dot (Latin middle dot), 3) Greek combining diaeresis with tonos/acute.

The explanations are essentially the same also, although I think the one you cited is a bit clearer and more precise. Bibleworks Unicode output produces a mix of "basic codepoint" and "extended codepoint", with about 7 or 8 characters from the "extended" (deprecated) list. It is a simple fix, though, with the edited text file I attached.
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Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

Stephen Hughes wrote:If someone wanted to find further equivalences in two different languages and make them the same, then the Greek omicron (without accentuation) could be subsituted for the English letter "o", or if we follow this example of substituting the more modern for the ancient, the English letter "o" could be used for the Greek letter omicron.

I think those graphically similar characters - in polytonic and monotonic Greek - are functionally quite different.
My only interest is that different systems use the same mapping for the same characters. Otherwise it is not possible to compare the same language from different sources, which is what I encountered here.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Thomas Dolhanty wrote:My only interest is that different systems use the same mapping for the same characters. Otherwise it is not possible to compare the same language from different sources, which is what I encountered here.
Well, I didn't mean to be seeming to be giving out on you for bringing it up, but it raises a number of issues.

Even if a search engine is employed from it's own front page, the search is not going to return results from other variants in the language itself. Firstly, there are ellided and contacted form, then there are spelling variants such as the breathings on double rho's, pi / tau / kappa for phi / theta / chi in some circumstances and the nu / gamma (agma) variations before palatals. Even if a system of standardisation was employed, simple strict searches would not return 100% reliable results. There still needs to be a degree of vagueness in the search, which can then be checked either automatically or manually.

What I meant by those comments was that the monotonic 'tonos' plays the role of a stress marker in a word, and is only used when a word has a stressed syllable. It looks similar, but it not the functional equivalent of a polytonic oxia. In terms of Modern Greek polytonic orthography, all three - ὀξεῖα, βαρεῖα and περισπωμένη - are indeed equivalent to the tonos, but in terms of ancient Greek, they are not, and especially, the tonos is not the equilvalent of ὀξεῖα with the other two - βαρεῖα and περισπωμένη - lost.

I was questioning the supposition of equivalence, not the advantages of a standardisation.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Thomas Dolhanty wrote:Now that I have files that will talk to each other - my BW output and a larger file from Perseus which Jonathan provided - I will start to work on checking output against output from different sources.
This is really great.

The file I provided was created using XQuery, obtaining available infinitive forms for the verbs of the Greek New Testament from the Perseus morphology service.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Infinitives, Unicode, and BibleWorks Output

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

When I described the Unicode output issues with Bibleworks, I should also have mentioned that Accordance seemed to be mapped the same way as BW. I do not have a copy of Accordance, but was passed a small piece of output from that software.

If you are using Accordance, or will use it, for comparative studies of output from different sources, then you will need to take this into account, and find out from Accordance how to adjust the output to match the current UTF8 standard.

If anyone wants to know for certain if this is an issue with Accordance, you can PM me a couple of paragraphs of output from that software and I will check it out.
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