Την Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:14:16 +0100,ο(η) Jan Willem Stumpel
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> έγραψε/wrote:
Πιστιόλης Κωνσταντίνος wrote:
In that page you propose:
...A font which includes all accent combinations for Classical Greek is,
for instance, FreeSerif. The efont bitmap fonts (for xterm) also have
them...
Which may or may not be valid depending which symbol your keymap
produces
for acute (oxia or tonos). FreeSerif has a different symbol for 'tonos'
and 'oxia' and ancient greek is probably not viewed correctly if someone
types using the gr(polytonic) keymap with el_GR.UTF-8 locale
You are right of course. But this (I am sorry) is in the 'keyboard
input' section of my page, which I have not updated yet, and I am still
not quite sure what it should say. Should there, or should there not, be
input methods for both 'oxia' and 'tonos', given that they are
'officially' the same? I mean, what should be the advice to the
classicists?
My request for comment was, so far, only on the new 'font' section of
the document, section 4.5.
Ok, quite explanatory!
Just one comment:
... Typographical fashions in Greece have now changed, so this solution
is right for modern Greek also...
It's not like a typographic fashion change; modern greek may still use any
glyph
for 'tonos'. You may see a dot, an acute, a line, a triangle, even a comma
if it is on a capital letter (like capital A-acute Ά, usually accent goes
to the left of capital letters). Let me explain more.
There is only one accent mark for modern greek, and it doesn't really
matter
how to draw it. It is just that the greek government admitted that
'tonos' which has replaced the former three accents (oxia, varia,
perispomeni)
is actualy nothing more than 'oxia'.
In other words, formally speaking, oxia replaced both varia and
perispomeni.
Why is valid for monotonic tonos (oxia) to have any glyph?
Because, at least since my parents remember (1940), noone cared about the
difference between varia (`) and oxia (΄). The books were printing them
correctly
but noone bothered in hand writing the formal 'katharevousa' or 'dimotiki'
greek. People used to make a distinction only between perispomeni
and tonos (meaning oxia or varia) and they usually preffered the glyph
of oxia or a vertical line above for this tonos.
Modern polytonic greek scripts usually don't use varia (grave). oxia
is mostly used in it's place
Technically speaking, a 'correct' font may be:
1. monotonic, (with no polytonic characters at all) where it doesn't
matter which glyph it uses for tonos
2. polytonic, which shall define the same glyph in 0x1f71 as in 0x3ac
and it should be oxia. (if it is not oxia, the font is still usable for
monotonic greek, even for polytonic if one does not use varia, but
not for ancient greek or modern polytonic greek with varia)
The 'correct' way to render different glyphs for every case, is probably
a 'smart' font implementation (unfortunately too far from today's reality).
Some greek terminology which may be useful
------------------------------------------
'Tonos' (τόνος) in greek means 'accent (mark)' in general, so this word was
used to indicate an accent without specifying which one
there are three tonos'es (οξεία, βαρεία, περισπωμένη)
'pnevma' (πνεῦμα) is the breathing mark. There are two of them
-'psili' (ψιλή) smooth breathing mark (comma above) and
-'dasia' (δασεία) rough breathing mark (reversed comma above).
Both do not exist in modern monotonic greek
'ypogegrameni' (ὑπογεγραμμένη) is the iota subscript (like ῃ, ᾳ)
and it also does not exist in monotonic greek.
'monotonic' and 'polytonic' greek, stands for using only one 'tonos'
or all the symbols. Modern greek is officially monotonic, but some
people (old men, the church, men of literature) still use it (me too).
There were two branches of evolution of the greek language. The
informal language of people, called 'dimotiki' (δημοτική, which means
'public') and the formal language of ecudated people 'katharevousa'
(καθαρεύουσα, which means 'pure'). Katharevousa comes in many versions,
depending how close it is to ancient greek.
Today dimotiki is the official language and practically only the
church sometimes uses 'simple' katharevousa (the most modern version).
Church always uses polytonic greek, but it does't distinguish between
oxia and varia (uses oxia only)
I hope it helped.
Feel free to ask any question about greek
regards,
Konstantinos
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