How to Type in Greek Part III: The Best Greek Fonts

 Biblical Greek  21 Responses »
Jul 122008
 

This is the third past in a series of posts about typing in Greek. The first post was about the the joys (and necessity) of Unicode character encoding. The second detailed how to set up a Greek keyboard. Now you need a good font. While up to this point we have been dealing with encodings and characters, the way in which an operating system matches the push of a key to a letter in a given language; now we are going to focus our attention on glyphs, the way in which different characters are represented by a particular font.

What do you want in a Greek Font?

Eye Candy: The most immediate qualification for a good font is eye candy. Seriously: this is important. The better looking your font, the easier it is to read, both for you and your audience.

Which do you prefer?Check out the image to the left. Which do you like better? The top glyph is what we call “sans serif” because it does not have the fancy shaping and decorative formatting that the bottom glyph has. Sans serif fonts are particularly common on the internet because they are the easiest to read, even if not the prettiest over all. Times New Roman, by contrast, is a serif font. If you write your papers using a serif font, your Greek should be a serif font as well (and vice-versa). This is usually just a matter of personal preference, but generally readers prefer serif over sans serif for extended amounts of text, and the opposite for presentations (PowerPoint) and Web pages.

A more specifically Greek decision involves accents, the most important of which is the circumflex. This again is a matter of preference, but I prefer the full semicircle over the tilde. Having said that, the font I am eventually going to recommend uses the tilde. Oh well…

Free: The second (and most important) qualification of a Greek font is that it should be free. There are two types of free: free beer and free speech. The former is probably the most immediate concern, but the latter is really the most important. A “free beer” font will be free to use and will not encumber you with licensing fees should you decide to publish your work using that font. The Microsoft fonts seem like they are free-beer fonts—at least you probably do not remembering paying for them—but in reality they are encumbered by a pretty strict license. They will be fine for basic personal use, but if you are planning to start a Greek-Verse-Greeting-Card business, or am online journal for NT studies, you might want to pick something else. At the very least, you want to use a font that is free for both non-commercial and commercial use.

You may also be interested in a “free speech” font. In addition to being free as in free beer, free speech fonts allow you to redistribute, modify, and have absolute control over all underlying mechanics. You can use them, change them, and distribute them, all without asking permission.

In short, you want a font that is licensed under an a so called “copy left” license. These are “open source” licenses. Applied to fonts, these licenses define the parameters by which you can use and modify the glyphs in question; they will be royalty-free (“free beer”) and also free-to-modify (“free speech”) under certain conditions. .

So what fonts should I use?
The following is a list of the best fonts available. Only Unicode fonts are included:

  • Gentium would be my first-choice recommendation. It is a serif font. The standard versions uses the tilde for the circumflex, though an alternative version (GentiumAlt) is now included in the download that uses the half-moon. It includes a full Latin set of characters, which means that in addition to being your Greek font, you could use it as a whole-sale replacement for Times New Roman, or whatever default font you use in your documents—a one-stop shop for all your Latin-based language needs. Additionally, it is fully open (both “free beer” and “free speech”), and is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, which is excellent. It includes installers for Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as source code. The recent addition of GentiumAlt to the font family eliminates all my previous hesitations about recommending this font. It really is excellent, and its Latin characters are so nice that I have begun using it as my default serif font for all my documents.  Gentium is maintained by SIL, which has developed quite a reputation among linguists, and promises robust future development while maintaining an open licensing schema. (By the way, if you are using Ubuntu/Debian Linux, you can install from the command line: “sudo apt-get install ttf-gentium”.)
  • Galatia SIL is a serif font that uses a half-moon circumflex. It is “free beer” but not “free speech.” This is a slight problem because the font no longer appears to be actively developed, which is unfortunate because it is probably the best-looking Greek font available. A font that is no longer supported by those that made it can be problematic because errors will not get fixed, and errors might crop up as the rest of the computer world marches on.
  • Freefont. I have not had much experience with this font. It’s biggest claim to fame is its audacity: the goal of the project is to support every unicode character, which is pretty ambitious. It looks nice and is licensed under the GNU (pronounced GooNoo) public license, the best and original “copy-left” license. You can check out more information on the project here.
  • Linux Libertine and other OpenType fonts are available for Linux and other operating systems, including Windows, despite the name. A good choice. Fully open. But they are not the prettiest fonts available, and I’ve had issues with software compatibility (such as exporting a document to PDF).
  • Other SIL fonts. The Summer Institute of Linguistics specializes in languages, translations, and technological tools. There are many fonts available on their site, most of which provide Unicode support, many of which are licensed under their OFL. If you are in search of a different Greek font, or a font for a non-Latin character set (coptic, Hebrew, etc.), this is the place to start.
  • The Free Font Foundation has several Unicode fonts that are worth checking out.
  • Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic are not yet ready to deploy, as they do not yet support Greek characters. Nevertheless, they are the next “upgrade” to the wonderful Gentium font family, listed above. Gentium only builds regular and italic glyph-sets into its definition: no additional weights are included. This is not a problem for basic users; almost all Word Processors are able to automatically “add” bold weighting to any font, regardless of its internal definition (at least that is my understanding—I am able to get great-looking bold characters with the regular Gentium fonts listed above). Publishing companies, by contrast, will not want to rely on a particular Word Processor’s interpretation of a font, and will therefore require additional “built in” weights. So, to make up for this deficiency, SIL has split Gentium development. Both Gentium Basic and Gentium Book Basic are based on the Gentium glyph-set, but will include bold-weight characters, as well as some other features not included in the original Gentium (again, this is my understanding of their explanation, and I invite correction from anyone with more accurate knowledge). They do not yet support Polytonic Greek, however, though eventually they will support every character that Gentium supports. Keep an eye on these; when they are finished they could supply the biblical scholar and publisher with all their Latin-based-character needs.
  • Still looking? While the above fonts are, in my judgment, the best available, there are others. The above link provides some additional online resources. This site might also come in handy, though some of the fonts listed are either terrible or not free in any sense.
  • SBL has an collection of legacy fonts available at their site, none of which are included in the above lists due to their non-open license, and also because only a few of them include Unicode support.

What about Hebrew?

I have given short-shrift to Hebrew, and I apologize. There are reasons, however. There really is only one decent open-standard font that I know about for Biblical Hebrew: Ezra SIL. It’s fully open under SIL’s OFL, it supports every character used in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, and it’s easy on the eyes. You will need to download a special keyboard to get it working, though. Instructions for doing so are available on the download page, where you can also find a keyboard map of the layout. Also: you may run into small problems with Macs and in Linux, though nothing catastrophic. If anyone has other Hebrew fonts they would like to recommend, please do so in the comments.

Ros Clarke notes in one of the comments that SBL has a good Hebrew font available here. It is a very well designed font that includes Linux support. The only disadvantage is that it is not licensed under an open standard, though SBL does provide it free of charge for non-commericial use. Thanks Ros.

Conclusion

Don’t forget to check out my previous posts on Unicode and on setting up a Greek keyboard. All this might sound a bit intimidating, but it really will make your life easier in the long run.

 Posted by at 9:28 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

 Posted by at 8:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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). 255 Coins? 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.How to Enable Unicode 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:

οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ᾽ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον.

More to come, and hope this helps.

 Posted by at 8:20 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Greek Summer Reading II: Get a Reader’s Greek New Testament

 Biblical Greek, Books  No Responses »
Jun 292008
 

Continuing with the theme of my previous post–that the best way to learn Greek is to read Greek–let me recommend UBS’s Greek New Testament: Reader’s Edition.

The most difficult aspect of keeping up with Greek is limited time, especially if you are a busy pastor or student juggling multiple projects. A Reader’s Greek NT helps tremendously in this regard, as it will define words that occur infrequently in footnotes, keeping you in the text and not out and about searching through other books. Zondervan published one of these years back, but their version utilizes an awkward font, has hard to read footnotes, and most importantly does not make use of the of the “standard” UBS text (it uses a modified version, the basis of their NIV translation). The UBS edition makes up for all these deficiencies and additionally includes more words (occurrences up to 22 times or less, if I remember correctly), provides a comprehensive dictionary in the back (which you should never admit to using, since I’m sure you already know all the words that occur 22 times or more), and even parses out words that misbehave (a prize to the first person that provides the parsing and lexical form of ἐνέγκας).

All in all, I have found it incredibly helpful. They are available at the Westminster Bookstore, which offers great deals on shipping.

Next up in the summer Greek series: how to write ἐνέγκας in such a way that it does not look like evne,gkaj to half of your audience.

 Posted by at 1:45 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Greek Summer Reading

 Biblical Greek, Books  6 Responses »
Jun 272008
 

One question I get a lot is “how do I keep up with my Greek?” At the risk of over-simplification, my answer is… wait for it…  read Greek!

Lee Irons has a variety of resources on his site to make such reading less intimidating for the beginner to intermediate Greekling. To get started, check out his introduction to his reading program. You will also want to download his more detailed Greek Reading Calendar. Most importantly, pick up a copy of his Greek Syntax Notes, which he promises to distribute in installments throughout the year.

Also, I highly recommend Young’s Intermediate NT Greek, which is concise. comprehensive, linguistically-aware, and easy to use. All together, it is an excellent reference that should be on everyone’s bookshelf, and will be enormously helpful in those tough-to-read sections.

Finally, I am making some of my beginner Form and Function guides available here. They are still a work in progress, and only cover the basics of Greek syntax, but they can serve as a good resource for reminding you of what you already know. These are highly indebted to Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, Machen/McCartney’s NT Greek for Beginners and Young’s aforementioned Greek grammar (many of the terms of several of the guides have been directly lifted from the last two of these, since they are both used in my Greek class).

Stay tuned! I plan on posting a variety of Greek resources in the near future, including a guide to typing in Greek and an introduction to diagramming with Bibleworks. So if you haven’t subscribed to the site, do so!

 Posted by at 6:00 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,
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