Typing polytonic Greek in XP

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Δαν
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Typing polytonic Greek in XP

Post by Δαν »

Does anyone know how to combine an accent with a Makron?

I can Makron a vowel: ᾱ ῑ

and I can accent a vowl: ά ὰ

But I do not see how to combine the two using "The Greek Polytonic System" and the Palatino Linotype in XP.

I'm trying to type the lessons and vocabulary in JWW's "The First Greek Book".

ευχα?ιστώ πολ?!

Δαν

edonnelly
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Post by edonnelly »

There's no great way to do this. Below is what I was told by Paul in another thread when I was asking about doing the exact same thing:
Paul wrote:There are presently no pre-combined macron + accent characters defined in Unicode.

It is possible to create such glyphs using so-called "combining characters", e.g., the sequence &8048;&772; creates lowercase alpha with macron and acute accent. However, the appearance of such combining characters (see below) is in my experience highly dependent on the rendering client (e.g., the browser) and on the font face.

á½°Ì„
The lists:
G'Oogle and the Internet Pharrchive - 1100 or so free Latin and Greek books.
DownLOEBables - Free books from the Loeb Classical Library

IVSTINIANVS
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Post by IVSTINIANVS »

In other words, the Unicode standard does not provide for precombined combinations of accents and macrons (or breves). Many typesetting fonts provided no such examples, either, actually -- there is more than one dictionary that has to print the vowel with the macron or breve separately from the rest of the word.

perispomenon
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Post by perispomenon »

IVSTINIANVS wrote:In other words, the Unicode standard does not provide for precombined combinations of accents and macrons (or breves).
On my Mac I can type them fine. ὰ̄, or ὺ̆, for example. So, if the Unicode standard does not provide this, what does?

edonnelly
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Post by edonnelly »

perispomenon wrote:On my Mac I can type them fine. ὰ̄, or ὺ̆, for example. So, if the Unicode standard does not provide this, what does?
I think it means that there is not a single unicode character with the look that you got -- it comes from combining two different characters (the original letter and a so-called "combing character") and superimposing them. So, the combining is supported by unicode, it's just not the same as having a single character. I get the impression that how the combining characters display is not only a function of the font, but also of the particular application displaying them, thus leading too higher variability.
The lists:
G'Oogle and the Internet Pharrchive - 1100 or so free Latin and Greek books.
DownLOEBables - Free books from the Loeb Classical Library

Δαν
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No unicode for Makron & Accute Accent

Post by Δαν »

Thank you for pointing out the shortcomings Unicode definitions. So this leads to another question: is this any big deal?

In my new and brief introduction to Anabasis, I do not see any examples of an accute and makron combined in the actual text (Loeb Classic), only in JWW's book.

While typing my exercises I have been leaving off the macron in favor of the accute or grave or whatever other accent mark is used. I then print these and share them with my children. I hope I'm not corrupting them too much :)

ευχα?ιστώ πολ?!

Δαν

Beatus Pistor
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Post by Beatus Pistor »

This was very useful for me:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/pers ... tonic.mspx

The problem is that you need MS-Office, in order to install Bill's ugly Tahoma/Arial universal font. However, if you are interested in a nicer font, which its polytonic Greek face is pretty similar to the usual times new roman(which doesn't have polytonic greek support), I highly recommend gentium(http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page ... id=Gentium), my only experience, however, being only after having installed the ms polytonic support.

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