2008 July | Nerdlets

Zotero 1.5 Preview Released

Jul 082008

For those who use the excellent bibliographical software Zotero, a major milestone is in the works. The 1.5 release will support, among other features, keeping a full copy of your bibliographic database, which can be accessed by and synced with any of your computers, regardless of Operating System.

The latest release is still in development, and should be used with caution, but a preview candidate has nevertheless been submitted to the public for testing. If your are interested in trying out the new features, check out their announcement. Also, this release requires Firefox 3. Those who prefer the stable version should stick with Zotero 1.0.

Not familiar with Zotero? Check out my previous post, which introduces the software and shows you how to add JBL’s bibliographic style to the mix.

New Thoughts on an Old Tablet

Bible and Hermeneutics No Responses »

Jul 072008

The New York Times recently ran this article about a pre-Christian tablet that speaks of a Messiah to be raised after three days. The article is interesting to me in that it points to the mixed response that evangelicals have to these sorts of things. On the one hand, it can be used to show that Christian interpretations of the OT are not so far fetched after all, despite some claims to the contrary. On the other, some have argued that it calls into question the “uniqueness” of Christian beliefs.

How to Type in Greek Part II: Setting Up the Microsoft Greek Polytonic Keyboard

Biblical Greek 14 Responses »

Jul 072008

Now that you have a full appreciation of Unicode it’s time to setup windows to type in Greek (and Hebrew, for that matter).

Getting Started

First, open up your favorite document editor. I’m using OpenOffice.org, a free, powerful, and interpolatable solution to Microsoft Office. For testing purposes we need to use a Unicode font that supports the full set of Greek characters. If you’re using Vista, you can leave it on Times New Roman. Everyone else (and Vista users too, just to be safe), should set their font to either Palatino Linotype or Arial Unicode MS (I prefer the latter). Start typing. Still English. Now the fun begins.

Adding Keyboards

Access your control panel and select “Regional and Language Options.” I am using Vista, so the name’s might be changed for XP or 2000 (and if you’re using ME or 98, it’s time to either upgrade or switch to Linux). Click on the “Keyboards and Languages” tab, which will open a new window. Click the “Add…” a keyboard/language button, which opens up yet another window. Browse for “Greek,” and then select the “Greek Polytonic” keyboard. Other keyboards will not work; you need Greek Polytonic. Click Ok, then Apply. Notice the Greek keyboard has been added to your list.

You will need an easy and convenient way to switch between keyboards, so click on the “Language Bar” tab. Choose any option other than “hidden” (I suggest docking it in the taskbar). In the “Advanced Key Settings” tab you can set special keyboard shortcuts for switching between keyboards, in accordance with your preferences.

There are other keyboards you might be interested in. Notice that I have two keyboards under “English.” The “United States-International” keyboard allows me to type words like “Bëla Fleck,” “Käsemann,” and “vis-à-vis” with particularly pretentious accuracy. I also have a Hebrew keyboard installed, which requires some comment. The Hebrew keyboard included in Windows is terrible; the layout is counter intuitive, and it lacks vowel pointings. You will have to install another keyboard, which can be downloaded here. The download includes instructions for installation and a keyboard layout in PDF.

Now that our keyboards are installed, you should see a new little bar in your already-busy taskbar. This is your language bar, which you can use to select the language you want to type in, as well as the keyboard you want to use for that language (if you set up more than one). Select “EL”, which is the Greek setting (remember, the Greek word for Greek is ελληνος).

Typing in Greek

Now go back to your word processor and start typing. You should see some Greek characters now. If not, check your language bar again (sometimes switching applications causes the system to revert to your default language).

The Layout of your New Keyboard

Now you need to learn how to use your new keyboard. There will probably be some keyboard-concepts you are not familiar with, the most important of which are called “dead keys.” Dead keys are keys that only function in combination with other keys. The standard English keyboard does not use deadkeys, so if you are used to that keyboard, this might take same getting used to (as will the “US-International”) keyboard. With a little practice, however, you will be a master, and might even consider switching to a dead-key enabled keyboard as your default (as I eventually did).

To get started, press the ” key in your Word Processor. Nothing happened. That’s because Microsoft is waiting for another key. Now type “a”. You should see something like ἁ. Dead keys are used by the Greek keyboard to create all those diacritical marks necessary for typing in ancient Greek. Don’t worry, they’re all there, you just need to find where to find them.

Take a look at the following diagram. This is a keyboard map for the Polytonic keyboard. The keys in yellow are all dead-keys and will therefore only work in combination with an appropriate secondary key (and only “legal” Greek characters can be produced–the fabled λ with a smooth-breathing is still only a fantasy).

Now try this one. Notice that the Right “Alt” key (and ONLY the right one) is greyed-in. This indicates a new keyboard state. When you hold down the right Alt key, the keyboard “shifts” to allow access to different keys, which are shown in the keyboard map. Again, the yellow keys are dead keys, so the key combination “alt-q” followed by an “a” results in the following character: ᾴ.

There are four total keyboard states, two of which you already use: (1) Standard and (2) Shifted. Now you add two more: (3) Alt and (4) Alt-Shift. Remember, it is only the right Alt that does this.

A Full Keyboard Map

Microsoft used to have full documentation of the Polytonic Keyboard layout online, but it no longer appears to be available. Rather than distribute the whole document, which is needlessly long and complicated, I have copied their map images (which I believe are public domain) and placed them in my own PDF cheat sheet. Download it here!

One more note: you may be wondering how to access keys that used to be easy to get to, such as the “;” key, which is now a dead-key. The answer: certain keys can only be accessed by typing a dead-key followed by a space. These are usually keys that are not often used, so it’s not really a problem. A map for these keys is provided on the second page of the above PDF.

Conclusion

All this sounds intimidating, but you will get used to your new keyboard quickly, and you will be proud of your efforts. No more searching that horrible “insert symbol” dialog. No more dependency on software like Bibleworks for Greek characters. Dead keys are your friends!

Next up: the best fonts for Greek and Hebrew.

How to Type in Greek Part I: An Introduction to Unicode

Biblical Greek 11 Responses »

Jul 032008

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve spent a lot of work typing out a paper, or preparing some notes on the Bible, or posting some thoughts on a blog, and like a good little Greekling, you made sure to stick to the original languages. Now you want to share your efforts, either by distributing your paper (say, sending it to a professor by email), or publishing it on the web. Well, you might have a problem. If you did not use Unicode when typing Greek, your quotation of John 3:16 may look like this:

ou[twj ga.r hvga,phsen o` qeo.j to.n ko,smon(

Why does this happen? Well, it happens because you are using an ASCII-based font. What does that mean? Before 1997, most fonts were ASCII fonts; they were fonts that represented characters using an 8-bit system. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. An 8-bit number is a string of 8 ones and/or zeroes. When you use an ASCII font, each 8-bit number represents a different character: 00000001 is “a”, 00000010 is “b”, etc. The problem? An 8-bit number can only represent 256 characters (2 to the power of 8). Remember Zelda? He could only carry 255 coins because the NES was an 8-bit system, and could therefore only count to 255 (0 counts as a number).

So the problem is, in order to type in foreign languages we need more characters. 256 is plenty for most European languages, but when you add Mandarin, Hebrew, or Greek into the equation, you will have problems. Your ASCII Greek font gets around this by mapping Greek glyphs onto English characters. A glyph is the particular representation of a character. “A” “a” “a” and “a” are different glyphs of the same character: the first letter of the English alphabet. Since ASCII cannot represent every character in every language, it just changes the glyph to match the language in question and then maps those glyphs on English characters. So your ASCII Greek font is tricking the computer. You see θέος, but the computer sees y’eow. It thinks you are writing in English, not Greek. And the problem is: the computer is right.

Now that ASCII Greek font will work fine in a lot of cases, but what if you ever want to change the font in your paper? There are many reasons to do so. You find a font you like better. You want to distribute your paper to people that might not have access to your font. You want to post it online where is will be viewed with who knows what font. Bottom line: if reading your paper depends on a particular font, you’re in trouble. And if you ever do decide to change fonts, you’re out of look: the only way is to retype all that beautiful Greek.

Or you could use Unicode from the beginning. Unlike ASCII, Unicode supports up-to 32 bits (there are different subsets, but there’s no need to bother with that). That’s 4,294,967,296 possible slots, which is more than enough to support every character in every language. That’s the bottom line: Unicode lets us type out characters, not glyphs, so we don’t have to trick the computer. We can tell the computer from the beginning that we want to type in Greek–ancient Greek, to be precise–and the computer will respond accordingly. All major Word Processors support Unicode, as do most browsers. Its the standard, and you should use it.

So how do you set it up? Good question. The answer: if you’re using any modern Operating System (Windows 98 and after, any Mac, any Linux), it’s already running. Times New Roman is a Unicode font, and you can use it to type in Greek and Hebrew (though its not very pretty). The problem is, most of our systems assume we only want to type in English. We need to tell our system that we are smarter than it gives us credit, that we know Greek and will sometimes be typing in Greek. There is complicated, expensive, and bloated software out there on the web to help you do this, but they’re completely unnecessary. Windows (and Linux and Apple) can do it, and it’s not difficult. You just need to change a few settings, which we’ll do together (with pictures!) next post. And I’ll also provide some good open-standard font suggestions.

As a practical note, many of us simply copy and paste from our Bible software. For me, it’s Bibleworks, though the Perseus Project has the entire Greek bible online, and in Unicode. Bibleworks prior to version 7, for reasons I cannot fathom, did not support Unicode. Bibleworks 7 provides such support, but it is, for reasons I cannot fathom, not enabled by default. This is easy to change, however. Just go to “Tools” -> “Options” and click on the “Fonts” tab. Click “Export Fonts,” which will provide you with two boxes you can check. Check them, and you’re good to go. Now whenever you copy and paste from Bibleworks 7, it will export the text in Unicode. Finally, your readers will know the truth, regardless of their fonts: