May 112009
I have written a series of guides on best practices for typing in Greek. The trick is to use Unicode. Though it requires some initial struggle the payoff is enormous, and will save you frustration down the road.
There is a new guide out for Linux users, and it looks excellent (pretty pictures). Find that here.
For Windows setup follow this guide. For fonts, check out my review here. And if you need a font with text-critical glyphs, try this.
Related posts:
Hello Tommy,
Just ran across your blog. Happy to meet my Ubuntu counterpart.
Here's my version of enabling a Unicode keyboard on the Mac side of things:
http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/enterin…
Cheers.
Hey, thanks for sharing the website. I beg to differ with it, however. If you are not intending to use modern Greek, it's best to set Ubuntu/Linux keyboard to Polytonic Greek: fewer key strokes to add diacritical marks. The normal Greece setting presumes modern Greek as normative and the accents as "extras." I've put together a pdf of the most useful GNT diacritical marks. If you email me, I'm happy to share it, copylefted of course.
Margaret,
Wasn't sure if the comment was for me or not. Using a keyboard designed by English techs may offer a speed increase, but for the kind of work I do, the trade off is not worth the benefit of learning something more about Greek culture.
Tommy,
I've finally switched over to Ubuntu (Natty) from Windows and have things pretty well set, but I'm having trouble finding a sufficient keymap for the polytonic Greek keyboard. SBL has a copy of the Tiro Hebrew Keyboard manual on their website (http://www.sbl-site.org/Fonts/BiblicalHebrewTiroManual.pdf), but I've yet to find anything comparable for Greek.
The guide that you cite from simos.info is now a privately-shared Google Doc. I've previously requested access but haven't yet been able to get into that document. Would you happen to know of any other keymaps for the various shift states in the polytonic keyboard?
Thanks so much for your thoughts. I hope all is well.
Hey David, Congrats on the move! And on everything else that's been going on for you! The classes you are teaching look interesting.
Poythress is the go to guy when it comes to this kind of stuff. I used his sight for getting my keyboard perfected: http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles… . He has a custom keyboard designed for linux, complete with instructions about what to do with it. To be honest I haven't messed with this in awhile, since once it's set up you can back it all up and never worry about it again. Try one of those out, and if you run into problems, I'd love to know what they are and am happy to try and help!
Good luck!
Tommy,
Thanks so much for the congratulations and the suggestion to take another look at Poythress's layouts. I've worked on these for a while before, trying to get them to work but have never had much success. Today, though, for some reason, the setup only took 5–10 minutes, and things now seem to be working seamlessly.
"If at first, you don't succeed…."
Thanks, again.
Blessings,
David