Hi,
I got an okay for my request to use the Greek text for my compilation of Euclid’s Elements.
Thanks for writing. We are currently working on a new version of Euclid which will feature completely new drawings and a restructured text.
If you wish to host your own text, you may of course do so. We cannot assert any copyright over the Greek text. Be sure to send us the link and I’ll forward it to the programmer working on the new version of Euclid.
Best,
Lisa
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I have been searching for Euclid’s Elements in Greek and founded in
Perseus Digital Library. But the drawings crucial for understanding the
text were all missing. So I decided to draw them myself, and I recently
finished them. (The Euclid’s Elements is not as hard as the literary
works of other ancient authors. But the drawings are very crucial in
understanding the directions and proofs.)
I don’t think that a presence of an inert, text version of Elements
would diminish the use of Perseus Digital Library’s language tools. And
with drawings incorporated in the text, it could draw more people to
Perseus. Since computer screen is not a good place to read books, and
moreover, without the drawings it is very hard to grasp the idea in
Elements. But you could regard it the other way.
If it is not against your principal goal of running the invaluable
Perseus Digital Library, I wish you give me a permission to use the
Greek e-text of Euclid’s Elements to TeX and compile a figured version,
and to distribute it freely for the public. Or please just take a look
at it before you decide. Since your email server does not let
attachments through, I do not attach the file in this email. But please
let me know if you have another route to take it for the examination.
The file size is about 1.37MB.
Or if it is against your policy for me to distributed such a version
freely on my own, please just let me send you the compiled document and
you decide if you should host it on your own site or not. I just want to
share the result of my hard work on the drawings with as many people as
possible.
Mingshey, that is awesome!!! Before I started studying Greek I didn’t realize what math works were available in Greek. Perhaps someday I’ll be proficient enough in both Math and Greek to read this.
It’s like a hobby. But I’m not so well versed in math. Just enjoying some of the fun sides of math. And you don’t have to have a deep knowledge to understand Elements. You just prepare a ruler and a compass and play with it, as directed in the book.
I use to play around with LaTeX about 4 years ago but I haven’t touched it in a long time. A few of Textkit’s early classical ebooks were published with LaTex. Perhaps it’s time again to use it. The Greek font is very nice looking. I got interested in LaTex by reading an article that featured Knuth’s career and in it Dr. Knuth discussed the mathmatical difficulties of typesetting.
Will we host it? We’ll have to clear the copyright. I’ll PM you.
LaTeX. It’s a huge set of macros that sits on top of TeX - as in τέχνη.
It’s a sophisticated document production system, mostly beloved of mathematicians and scientists because it does such a nice job of setting math, and has for quite a long time now. It’s free, available for most computer systems, and probably something only a c omputer geek can love.
The typesetting for the Aoidoi commentaries is pretty complex, so this is going to exaggerate the ugliness, but here’s one line from Sappho 31:
1. \grk{fa'ineta'i moi k=hnoc >'isoc j'eoisin}
\footnotetextC[1]{
\bgrk{fa'inomai} \textit{seem, appear}. \SP
\bgrk{k=hnoc} $=$ \bgrk{>eke=inoc} \textit{that}. \SP
\bgrk{>'isoc -h -on} \textit{equal}; \bgrk{>'isoc j'eoisin} is usually
taken to mean \textit{equal in luck to, as lucky as} the gods. \SP
}
Several of the commands in there (\SP, for example) are code I myself wrote. So unlike your average word processor, I can write programs in LaTeX. This isn’t really necessary if you’re writing a memo, but it’s useful for complex tasks. If he had wanted to, Mingshey could have produced the figures for his Euclid in pure TeX by hand.
Most fascinating! I’m glad someone knows how to use these wonderful tools, but I’m not worthy. I’d better stick to keeping above water with studying Greek and the day to day needs.
While I confess to Geekiness, I haven’t attained to actual Geekship.
Good Work Mingshey; Very nice document. I sent the link to some math prof.s I know.
Thanks.
Well, I do not know some tricks of LaTeX I needed to typeset the chapter names and titles for definitions and propositions all in Greek. (I could use another Greek typesetting style file(that is a file with macros), but then I got other problems, such as the indices in the diagrams not being typeset in Greek.) So I decided to change them into English.
And I started to think it’s too clumsy to put all the propositions in the table of contents. I think I’d better put the chapters only in the toc.(pls give me your opinions on this) And a couple of minor corrections and revisions can be waiting, since I didn’t check the consistency of all the indices of the diagram with those in the text.
And there’s one thing I wished to add: cross references to related definitions and propositions for relavant statements, as it is in the David Joyce’s home page for Euclid’s Elements. But it’s another big job I didn’t dare to start.
it’s strange but on my computer the greek font comes out really blurry. does anyone know how to fix this? it looks like a lot of work has gone into this so i really want to take a good look at it thanks, chad.
Yes, the Ibycus font I used is not a nice truetype font. It’s zig-zaggy when you magnify the letters large enough. And the smoothing feature of the Acrobat reader will show them a bit blurry. But it will print quite okay with a laser printer, at least up to 600 dpi.(FWIW, dots per inch)
There were better greek macros than ibycus, for the text, using truetype fonts. But there were few macro systems that incorporated the letters in the diagram and typeset them in Greek as well as the text.
And the text I used is encoded in betacode. The selection of the LaTeX macro and of the text encoding was made hand in hand. And I didn’t know enough to handle unicodes in LaTeX. Or to write euk files with embedded unicode indices on the drawing. And my goal was to get a nicely printed book of Elements. So I thought that was good enough for my purpose.
MyIlium, please don’t forget Iliad. I don’t believe Elements will prove an abundant liguistic and literary resource, though it can give a scientific and logical face of the Greek language.
I got a 30 days tryout version of Acrobat and put bookmarks for each postulates etc. During the process I found out a minor typo, but I decided to let it go like that, for this is not meant to be perfect. Irregularities in the size of figures, typos, English – non Greek – titles, silly preface, lack of cross references, there are too many things to touch if I want it perfect.
I was just made aware of Mingshey’s Euclid document, but I couldn’t get any of the links above to work. Are they working for other people? I notice that Jeff was considering hosting the document on textkit; I think it would be a great addition, if everything is in order with the copyright.
WOW!