Re: [NTLK] Greek Fonts 'n Unicode

From: Gerstein, Sam (Sam.Gerstein_at_Streamserve.Com)
Date: Mon Jun 10 2002 - 13:54:49 EDT


Daedalus wrote:
> It seems to me that we're looking at the font issue from two
> opposite sides. You prefer a standardized unicode font to
> allow importing of vast amounts of Greek documents from
> various sources and translation. I'm looking for a Greek
> font that people can actually type with on word processors.
>
> I don't mean to belabor this discussion--but it's all very
> interesting to me!

This is something that interests me as well, I hope my input will be welcome
in this conversation :)
I agree with Paul- the two issues of how the font is indexed and how you
input values are distinct. The fact that this Greek font puts the Greek
characters in the same codepoints as the Roman characters is a hack making
it so you can easily input Greek from a regular keyboard. It also means
that there is no other font that will display your text properly (okay,
maybe you don't care), or that will display both English (German, French,
etc.) and your Greek text. What I think Paul proposed, and what I believe
would be the best approach, is to create a font that puts the Greek glyphs
in their standard Unicode codepoints (not overlapping with Roman
characters), and write an "input method", a small application that allows
you to generate these proper values. It might be a keyboard mapping, where
the character generated by pressing a key on the keyboard would be replaced
with a Greek character, or it could also be a phonetically based converter
(which could work with handwritten words as well- you'd write it out
phoneticized in Roman and it would be converted). I've worked with IMEs for
Japanese that work both ways (I can't use the one that remaps the keyboard
;) But I assume you who write Greek are accustomed to a different keyboard
layout?)
Good luck!

-Sam

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