Rod Decker has compiled a list of typical fonts that support Polytonic Greek. Under normal circumstances you should pick the font that is most convenient, but for things you expect to reuse or publish, I recommend Gentium or SBL.
Mar 012012
That didn’t take long. The aforementioned new critical Greek New Testament has now been published in a variety of formats. You can start downloading here.
Here’s the really cool bit. Because they are providing the text in plain text, as well as other formats like PDF and XML, people have the freedom to play around with this stuff. What does that mean? It means you are not limited to Logos software (though that is available, and they have promised a free download for Logos on the iPhone). You can, for example, load a PDF onto Apple’s iBooks, and I’m sure a Kindle version is just around the corner.
And, within a couple of hours, Michael Hanel has already got a working copy running in Bibleworks, so grab that here.
For those who want to play around with the text for further distribution, you can find the license terms here. They are pretty lenient.
This is awesome stuff!
Yes you read that right. And if you are a regular follower of Nerdlets you can appreciate why this is significant. Up to this point there are no up-to-date critical editions of the Greek NT that are digital, freely available, and web/font friendly.
The announcement comes from Mike Holmes, the editor of this GNT, at Evangelical Textual Criticism. The text is being produced in partnership with Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature. The details are available here.
Some highlights:
- Free
- Digital and Print Editions will be available
- Unicode (this is important. For an introduction to Unicode, and why it is important in biblical studies, see here.)
- Semi-open, liberal licensing? You be the judge. I am basing that on this paragraph: “In addition to granting professors and students permission to use the SBLGNT freely in their writings, the End-User License Agreement encourages the development of new electronic and print products based on the SBLGNT through a liberal permission and licensing policy.” That seems to follow the same pattern as other SBL rescources, like there fonts, which are freely distributed, and which users are allowed to modify and distribute as they desire. It would be helpful to get clarity on this, though. Perhaps one of the Creative Commons licenses should be selected for it? This one seems appropriate.
In short, this is all kinds of awesome. Thanks to Mike, SBL, and Logos!
Apr 202010
The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here.
Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out this post.
- Image via Wikipedia
There is a new Unicode Polytonic Greek font available for all you font collectors out there. Rod Decker has the details and download instructions. His post is so complete, there is not much need for me to add to it.
The basic idea: this font supports a very wide range of characters—Hebrew glyphs, for example–but is not as professional looking as (my still-standing recommendation) Gentium (or GentiumAlt).
If you are clueless regarding this discussion, but want to better understand fonts and right way to type in Greek, start with this post by yours truly.
Jun 172009
Copies of Westcott/Hort and Tischendorf have long been available online in digital form. Tragelles’s Greek New Testament predates both of these and is now available as a digital (Unicode!) text. Even better: the text is open licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which means you can use it, modify it, and distribute it to your heart’s content; just don’t try to make money off it!
You can download the digital text here. More information is available here and here.
Michael Hanel already has a Bibleworks version ready for download here. And this is a great candidate for an eBook, so I will begin working on that soon (hopefully).
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.
Apr 292009
- Image via Wikipedia
Are you using Unicode to type in ancient Greek (if not, follow this guide)? Do your prefer OpenOffice to Microsoft Office? Well today is the day where it all pays off. There is only one Word Processor in the world that spell-checks ancient Greek, and that’s OpenOffice. You can set it up by installing this plugin for OpenOffice 2.4 or higher.
Update: The links to the ebook in question have been (preemptively) removed because of licensing issues. Such licensing issues are not an issue for the SBLGNT, which now has a kindle version available. So download that instead!
Having Googled long and hard for a free, accented, open-source, Unicode eBook of the Greek New Testament, and to no avail, I decided to make one myself.
Getting the Book
You can download the NA26/UBS4 Greek New Testament eBook in the following formats (right-click and “Save File As”): Kindle, Palm, mobi, and xhtml. Follow the instructions for your device. The Kindle version is the best, so use that if your device supports it. You can convert eBook files using the free application Calibre.
iPhone and iPod Touch users can use the free application Stanza with this guide to get everything set up (it’s easy).
If you need another format for your reader, try Stanza’s Desktop Reader to convert one format to another.
I will post about new releases and improvements on this site, so if you like what you see you may want to subscribe. There are a couple of improvements I would like to make–like sub-chapters and a better Table of Contents–but that will have to wait for another time. Stay tuned!
Licensing
The source text is for this eBook came from the MorphGNT with UBS4 (ver. 5.08) by CCAT and James Tauber, as produced by the Work Viewer web-app created by the Open Scriptures project. It is the same Greek text you will find on the much more robust Resurgence Greek Project and was originally derived from NA26.
This eBook is distributed and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as allowed and required by the use of MorphGNT.
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It’s been a long time coming, but SBL has finally released their promised Greek Font. The download page is here, or you can download it directly here. There is also a Hebrew font.
The fonts work in all Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, Mac). They are not open-source (so a couple of other fonts are still my top recommendations), but they are free to use:
SBL fonts are made available without cost to individual scholars for non-profit use. Commercial use by publishers is reserved for members of the SBL Font Foundation.
If you haven’t already set up your keyboard to support Unicode Greek, follow my guide (for Macs go here, or for Linux here).
SBL’s Biblical Font FAQ is also worth a read. If you’re not already familiar with the advantages of Unicode (as described, for example, in my guide), you may find their explanation of interest:
Why should I bother with a Unicode font? Isn’t it easier to keep using the fonts I have used for years?
With older, non-Unicode fonts, character glyphs were simply mapped over Roman characters. So, with SPEzra for example, pushing “b” displays a bet, and “[” displays an ayin. However, the computer understands these characters as “b” and “[.” Thus, when the document is transferred to a computer that does not have that specific font installed, the computer displays those characters.
Unicode seeks to allow for transfer of encoded documents between platforms and independent of fonts. So, if a document is typed using one Unicode font, it will also be viewable using another Unicode font. Likewise if the font is not installed, the computer simply defaults to its normal Unicode font. If one wants to use a different font for aesthetic (or other) reasons, one can change the font just like one would do with English. Additionally, the computer understands the characters to be the ones that the screen displays. So, an ayin both displays as an ayin and is encoded that way. This makes cross-platform text transfers and searches possible, because texts can be encoded with the characters in which they are written. Even though learning to switch to and use keyboard layouts for other languages takes a little bit of time to learn, the benefits of Unicode more than make up for this small initial investment of time and effort.
HT: Rod Decker
