Greek keyboard   Thursday, 20 August 2009

 

How to do accents?  An acute is done by using semicolon as a so-called ‘dead key’ – that is one that affects the next key-press.

 

And various ‘customised keyboards’ exist, including Perseus I think, about which see below.  They introduce more dead keys, to produce more diacritics – modern Greek needs only the acute.

 

The following table applies to Prof. Mastrenarde’s ‘Greek Keys’, see below.

 

α			a	α
β			b	β
γ			c	ψ
δ			d	δ
ε			e	ε
ζ			f	φ
η	h		g	γ
θ	y		h	η
ι			i	ι
κ			j	ξ
λ			k	κ
μ			l	λ
ν			m	μ
ξ	j		n	ν
ο			o	ο
π			p	π
ρ			q	;
σ	s		r	ρ
ς	w		s	σ
τ			t	τ
υ	u		u	υ
φ			v	ω
χ	x		w	ς
ψ	c		x	χ
ω	v		y	θ
;	q		z	ζ

 

 

Cent Schl α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

Book Ant α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

Cour New α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

Tim Rom α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

Tah oma α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω

 

‘Greek Keys’

This keyboard, and the ‘New Athena Unicode’ font, is provided by http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/greekkeys

I downloaded the beta version of this in December 07.  It adds the dead keys tabulated below. You press the top row character (1, 2, ..., =) given, to get the required diacritics on the next character.  This is supported by several fonts, including ‘New Athena Unicode’, Tahoma, and ‘Palatino Linotype’ (this last particularly elegant, and used in the following table):

 

1:acute  2:grave  3:circ  4:smooth  5:rough  6:smooth+acute  7:rough+acute  8:smooth+grave  9:rough+grave   0:smooth+circ    minus(-)::rough+circ    equals(=)::short

 

 

1	acute	ά
2	grave	ὲ
3	tilde	ῆ
4	smooth	εἰ
5	rough	Ἡ
6	smooth acute	ὤ
7	rough acute	ὥς
8	smooth grave	ἂ
9	rough grave	ἃ
0	smooth tilde	ἆ
-	rough tilde	ἇ
=	short	ᾰ

 

Use shift with the given character, to add iota subscript to the above.  e.g. shift-9 then a gives ᾃ.  Except shift-equals gives long (ᾱ).

 

Use Alt-Gr with a character to get it plain iota-subscripted; 

e.g. Alt-Gr a gives ᾳ.

 

Also, semicolon gives semicolon, and colon gives the single upper dot.

 

Alt-Gr+u is a dead-key giving a diaeresis on a following iota or upsilon (ϊ, ϋ).