Re: Experiments with classical Greek keyboard input

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Joe Schaffner wrote:

 [..]
 With this font, I can capture the entire entry, no problems, pointing
 fingers, arrows, boxes, tiny-elvises, polygreek etymology... There is
 virtually nothing I cannot do with the Unicode character set alone.

And in another message:

 http://modern-greek-verbs.tripod.com/home.html#unicode

Your document is impressive, and it clearly shows why we need Unicode (a
system which allows mixing many different languages in one document) and
also why we need input systems capable of switching between languages
very quickly (i.e. not requiring going through complicated nested menus).

Fonts are not a real problem. There are many fonts which can display
both ancient and modern Greek in UTF-8. You do not especially need the
XP version of Times New Roman (although thanks for the tip).

As far as switching between Latin and Greek is concerned, I would
recommend setting the group toggle key to only one single key, not
something like control-alt-K. I just set it to Left-Windows which (on
my system) is not used for anything useful. It really cycles, i.e. when
you get to the end of the possible groups, you get back to the
beginning. That does not seem to work for you; I do not know why.

Greek is, of course, a language which is enormously important in the
history of civilisation, and is therefore of interest to people from
many different cultures (or, in computer terms, 'locales'). Such people
could very well be resident in Greece, so they need to enter both
'ancient' and 'modern' Greek in their computers with a minimum of fuss.
Therefore now I think that there should be either

-- one gr keyboard layout which allows entering both modern and
   ancient Greek.

-- two gr keyboard layout variants, one which is optimised for modern
   Greek, and another one which enables inputting BOTH ancient and
   modern Greek (i.e both tonos and oxía) - although it might be
   somewhat sub-optimal compared to a keyboard which is 'modern Greek
   only'.

BTW What is a 'tiny elvis'?

Regards, Jan



--
Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive:  http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/

[Fwd: Re: Experiments with classical Greek keyboard input]

[Simos Xenitellis]

Dear All,
This e-mail appears not to have made it to the list (Kostas is probably
not subscribed to the list), therefore I forward it as there are some
interesting information here.

Simos

 Forwarded Message 
From: Πιστιόλης Κωνσταντίνος pistiolis στο ts τελεία sch τελεία gr
To: Simos Xenitellis simos74 στο gmx τελεία net,
linux-utf8@nl.linux.org
Subject: Re: Experiments with classical Greek keyboard input
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:11:05 +0200

Την Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:05:26 +,ο(η) Simos Xenitellis  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] έγραψε/wrote:

 O/H Jan Willem Stumpel έγραψε:
 Simos Xenitellis wrote:


 You can have a look at this document,  
 http://planet.hellug.gr/misc/polytonic/ Although it is in Greek, it
 should be feasible to discern the combinations proposed. For example,
 Νεκρό πλήκτρο is Dead key in the list. If there are queries, feel
 free to refer to me.


 Very interesting. Is this a proposal, or has it been implemented?
 According to Babelfish, you say Your distribution of Linux that
 has been published after October 2005 should include the renewed system
 that we describe here. Mine does not, but I don't trust the Babelfish
 translation..

 The referenced document is indeed a proposal.
 You are correct about October 2005. Several distributions were released  
 in October (Ubuntu, OpenSUSE) so the plan was to have the changes  
 upstream by the end of the summer so that they move to the new  
 distributions as they appear.
 However, this plan did not work out and we still did not submit these  
 changes.
 Konstantinos Pistiolis is working on this subject.
 As far as I can see, it would not be difficult to implement it. Nothing
 would have to be changed in the binaries, only in the xkb and Compose
 files.

 I noticed you only want to use 'two level' keys (normal and shift), not
 using AltGr. Is this some kind of standard? (e.g. Greek national
 standard, or some other kind of standard)? The present pc/gr file in xkb
 uses 'three level' keys.

 As far as I know there is no national standard for Greek polytonic.  
 Windows XP support Greek polytonic,
 however, there is an inherent disadvantage that you cannot stuck more  
 than one dead key; due to this
 quite a lot of keys have to be used as dead keys. In addition, if a  
 character accepts more than one diacritic,
 then you need three dead keys to cover all the cases (diacritic A,  
 diacritic B, diacritic A+B).
If it could be any, it is the old typewriter's standard (computers were not
used for text proccessing at the time polytonic was removed from modern  
greek),
but it didn't cover the full polytonic because it didn't have vareia  
(grave),
makron, and vrahy. It was rather used for modern greek than ancient greek.
This keymap defines a dead key for every combination, and is more or less
followed by the windows XP, using up to 16 or more dead keys!

However, the proposed keymap uses the same principles and only needs 9
dead keys

 Regarding the usage of AltGr. There have been quite a few discussions on  
 whether to use or not. I do not have the full details at my disposal.
 Kostas, would you like to chip in for this?
the accents, dead iota and the breathing marks shouldn't use it:
1. most of the dead keys are too often used to be put in third
level (except for makron, vrahy). Each symbol is aproximately
used in 1 every 3-5 words!
2. the altGr chooser was not used in the old typewriter's standard.
In fact, all symbols (except vareia=grave) have a position in
the old typewriter's standard which is preserved in the proposed keymap.

About makron and vrahy, I have proposed putting them in ] and } and not as  
an
altGr combination, as the openning [ and { are already occupied
as dead keys (~ and iota subscript in accordance to the typewriter  
standard).
The concept is that it wouldn't be bad to lose the closing brace, if
the openning brace is lost too, and it would save the altGr+dead_key
combinations for future use (see below).


The other symbols (ancient greek numbers) are also needed in modern
(monotonic) greek, and could be added either as altGr combinations,
or composed with dead acute, or even in both ways. eg:
altGr + sigma: numeric stigma
or
dead tonos + sigma   : numeric stigma
I don't know if the latter odd combination would produce conflicts in
an international Compose file, but this idea was used in the past in
greek keyboard, in the following combinations:
dead_tonos + .  : above (middle) dot
dead_tonos +   : «
dead_tonos +   : »
I believe that the Compose should actually be a part of the keymap;
not the locale. Dead keys are very good sticky third level choosers, for
languages that use them.
The present pc/gr file uses altgr for the euro symbol, the middle dot
and the «» symbols, along with the Compose combinations and I suggest
the same (duality) for all new symbols

Another idea is to use the same kind of rules to increase the usability
of the polytonic keyboard for writing