Some results for classical Greek: this is with Debian Sid, en_GB.UTF-8
locale, PC104 (US) keyboard. No KDE, no Gnome. Just X with icewm.
Uim and scim do not provide methods for classical Greek. The immodule
im-classicalgreek does not seem to work anymore with the newer versions
(2.4.0) of gtk-2. So another method has to be found.
I tried to use the facilities offered by xkb.
Open an xterm and type
setxkbmap us_intl (or whatever your favourite keyboard is).
This is an insurance policy; by pressing up-arrow you can always get
this command back.
Then type
setxkbmap "gr(polytonic)+level3(lwin_switch)"
You keyboard changes to Greek, with some accents available:
dead perispomenon on the [ key, e.g. ῶ, ᾶ
dead macron on the [ key with left-windows pressed, e.g. ᾱ.
dead iota subscriptum on the ] key, e.g. ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ
dead acute accent on the ; key, e.g. ύ, ά, ί
dead grave accent on the ' key, e.g. ὰ, ὸ, ὶ
Accents can be combined, e.g. ][v becomes ῷ, ];h becomes ῄ. The iota
always has to be entered first.
But there is no way to enter the "breathing" signs (spiritus asper and
spiritus lenis, as they were called when I was at school).
The only way I found (so far) to enter the breathing signs is to edit
the file /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/gr and change the lines
key <AC10> { [ dead_acute, dead_horn ] };
key <AC11> { [ dead_grave, dead_ogonek ] };
to
key <AC10> { [ dead_acute, dead_horn, 0x1000313 ] };
key <AC11> { [ dead_grave, dead_ogonek, 0x1000314 ] };
This makes the "breathing" signs available (after an X restart) on the ;
and ' keys, when the left-windows key is pressed. It is then possible to
enter things like ᾦ, ᾔ, ᾇ, ῥ. The breathing signs have to be entered
last (just before the letter itself).
This system is far from ideal. It should be possible to change from the
default keyboard to classical Greek (and back) by some hotkey instead of
a setxkbmap command. And also, several accent combinations can,
apparently, only be entered in xterm and openoffice, but not in Mozilla.
Suggestions for improvement are greatly appreciated. Apologies in
advance if all this has been covered before.
Regards, Jan
--
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
