Greek keyboard options

[tiro_hudson]

The first release version of the SBL Greek font should be available within the next few days (announcement to follow), and I am giving some thought to documentation and keyboarding issues. When we released the SBL Hebrew font, it was obvious that both an extensive manual and dedicated keyboard layouts and drivers would be needed: many issues in the computerisation Biblical Hebrew were only recently settled, during the very development of the SBL Hebrew font. The computerisation of classical and koine Greek is better established, other fonts already exist supporting these forms of polytonic Greek, and many classical and Biblical scholars are already working with Unicode encoded text.

I am currently trying to determine whether there is a need for SBL to produce Greek keyboard drivers for download along with the new font, or whether users will be satisfied with the Unicode input methods they already use. To that end, I would be grateful if Greek users could share, on the SBL Greek forum, information about the keyboards they already use, and whether there are limitations to these that SBL might usefully address. What keyboards are you using? Where did you get them? And are there things you wish they did better?

John Hudson

[SCCarlson]

I use the Polytonic Greek keyboard that comes standard with Windows installations.

[tiro_hudson]

Do you like the Windows polytonic keyboard? Anything you'd like to see improved?

[SCCarlson]

Do you like the Windows polytonic keyboard? Anything you'd like to see improved?

I'm very happy with it.  I suppose that the main thing for me--and this is an issue for all keyboards--is having some easy way to look up some of the more obscure key combinations.

Stephen

[jlharper]

I also am quite satisfied with the polytonic Greek keyboard that comes with Windows.  The dead-key system works well for entering the pre-combined glyphs.  My only frustrations come with Word, which often will try to treat the polytonic text as modern Greek and also "corrects" some medial σ-s into final.

[jakejackjacob]

I personally use the "Greek Polytonic" keyboard for MacOS. It works very well—all of the keys are well placed, though i still want to use the "u" key for "υ," so it is inevitable that I end up with at least one extra "θ" in any given document I compose. Oh well.

JACK

p.s. the font looks great. It has been killing me to not have a solid Greek font. Times, TNR, and Gentium all fall short.

[shightower]

I have just started using the Greek Polytonic Keyboard for Windows, but I am having a hard time locating the Greek Question Mark and Semicolon (semicolon and period above the line, respectively). Can anyone tell me the keystroke(s) for these? Also, is the tilde the only circumflex, or is there a semicircle mark available?

Stephen

[tiro_hudson]

You can access the ano teleia (Greek semicolon, U+0387) from the Windows Polytonic keyboard using the key combination

SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+]

There doesn't seem to be a way to enter the Greek question mark character (U+037E) from this keyboard. Ironically, it is possible to enter the Latin semicolon character though, using the deadkey sequence

Q + SPACE

This produces something that looks like the Greek question mark, but it is the incorrect codepoint.
___

Regarding the 'tilde'. There is one encoding for the Greek perispomeni, which may take either a tilde-like form or an inverted-breve shape. The latter was popularised by the Porsonic Greek types used in much Anglo-American classics publishing. The form of perispomeni seen in Greek manuscripts  and in non-British or American publishing is almost universally the tilde-like shape. Which form you get depends on what font you use. In the SBL Greek type, I used a tilde-like form in keeping with the Byzantine cursive style of the letters.

[shightower]

Thank you very much for the answers.

[TW]

I'm surprised to see such widespread satisfaction with the Windows keyboard.  I use Manuel Lopez's keyboard:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071013195325/http://members.aol.com/AtticGreek/

The only downside is that Windows Vista users will have to pay $19 for a compatible version of the Tavultesoft Keyman software.  But I've found this to worthwhile despite, in general, never paying for software.

[njastram]

The Greek Polytonic keyboard generally works well, but there is a mistake in its coding. The combination oxia and upogegrammeni (e.g. ᾴ ῄ ῴ)  should be coded to  AltGr+; (dead key), following the general convention that combinations with the upogegrammeni (iota subscript) are coded to the AltGr state of the keys for the accents and breathing marks. Instead, the AltGr+; (dead key) yields a combining dialytika and oxia (e.g., ̈́ΐ), which is also coded to the ` (dead key). Microsoft should be notified of the mistake.

[njastram]

Concerning the Greek question mark, the latest Unicode standard (http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#Unicode_Character_Database)
includes the following notation:

Canonical Equivalence Issues for Greek Punctuation. Some commonly used Greek punctuation marks are encoded in the Greek and Coptic block, but are canonical equivalents to generic punctuation marks encoded in the C0 Controls and Basic Latin block, because they are indistinguishable in shape. Thus, U+037E ";" GREEK QUESTION MARK is canonically equivalent to U+003B ";" SEMICOLON, and U+0387 "·" GREEK ANO TELEIA is canonically equivalent to U+00B7 "·" MIDDLE DOT. In these cases, as for other canonical singletons, the preferred form is the character that the canonical singletons are mapped to, namely U+003B and U+00B7 respectively. Those are the characters that will appear in any normalized form of Unicode text, even when used in Greek text as Greek punctuation. Text segmentation algorithms need to be aware of this issue, as the kinds of text units delimited by a semicolon or a middle dot in Greek text will typically  differ from those in Latin text.

The character properties for U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT are particularly problematical, in part because of identifier issues for that character. There is no guarantee that all of its properties will align exactly with U+0387 GREEK ANO TELEIA itself, because the latter were established based on the more limited function of the middle dot in Greek as a delimiting punctuation mark.

[tiro_hudson]

There are also possible glyph design discrepancies in these canonical equivalences. The Greek ano teleia is properly placed near the top of the non-ascending lowercase letters (the x-height, in Latin type terminology), roughly equivalent to the height of the top dot on the colon. The middle dot is aligned to the optical centre of the x-height, i.e. lower. Also, in all-caps settings, the ano teleia rises to align near the top of the capitals, even further from the height of the middle dot. This was a very poorly considered canonical equivalence.

[future_professor]

See my post under the Latest SBL Greek Font topic: the Greek keyboard works fine, except in punctuation / breathing marks / accents, which still appear in English.  Ideas?

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