George Lingas wrote:
> i still cant find the unicode standart for symbols
> such as "oxia" "perispomeni" "dasia" "upogegrameni"
> etc... in order to write polytonic text under windows
> 2000 or xp.
Under Windows XP, there is no need to bother about the
code units assigned to particular Greek characters.
Windows XP comes with a comprehensive selection of keyboard
drivers, including Polytonic Greek ones. All you have to do,
is to activate one of those, and use it.
I have conducted some short tests on the German version of
Windows XP, with a Polytonic keyboard driver installed in
the German input scheme. Hence, some minor details may vary,
in your version of Windows XP.
The keyboard driver was installed via Start/Systemsteuerung,
then double-klick on "Regions- und Sprachoptionen", then
click on the Sprachen tab, then klick on the Details button.
Subsequently, I can switch keyboards via hotkeys (Shift-Ctrl),
or via mouseklicks (keyboard icon in the tasl bar).
While the Polytonic keyboard is active, I can type basic Greek
characters via the keys labelled with the equivalent Latin
characters, with the following exceptional/additional bindings:
key | character
----+-------------
W | final Sigma
U | Theta
H | Eta
J | Xi
X | Chi
C | Psi
V | O mega
Y psilon, and Zeta, ar assigned to the Y and Z keys, respectivly,
as they are located on an US-American keyboard; on a German keyboard,
these keys are swapped, resulting two more exceptional bindings.
While the Polytonic keyboard is active, I can use some keys on
the far left and right to enter diacritical marks, such as accents,
breathing marks, Iota subscriptum, or dieresis. These keys act as
"dead keys", i. e., they modify the following keystroke (usually
a base character). Try these keys with a following H (Eta), to find
out their respective meaning. Note that this is a mere keyboard issue,
and is not related, in any way, with the code values generated: the
Polytonic keyboard driver generates precomposed characters in the
Greek Extended range.
Note also that you need a Polytonic font, such as Palatino Linotype,
to display the Greek-Extended characters. The usual WGL4 fonts
comprise only monotonic Greek.
Notepad, e.g., offers a choice of four different encodings, in its
Save-as command:
Notepad term | Meaning
-------------------+-------------------
ANSI | CP 1252
Unicode | UTF-16LE with BOM
Unicode Big Endian | UTF-16BE with BOM
UTF-8 | UTF-8 with BOM
Note that CP 1252, cf. <http://czyborra.com/charsets/codepages.html#CP1252>,
does not comprise Greek characters, so are replaced with question marks when
you try to store them, in this encoding.
Wordpad.exe offers, amongst others:
Wordpad term | Meaning
---------------------+-------------------
Unicode-Textdokument | UTF-16LE with BOM
I have not tested Word, or other Office components, under Windows XP.
In addition to the keyboard, you can exploit Word's Insert/Symbol command
to enter polytonic Greek characters.
For additional info on UTFs and BOMS, cf.
- <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html>, particularly
· <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html#1>
· <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html#2>
· <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html#6>
· <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html#22>
· <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/faq/utf_bom.html#29>
- <http://czyborra.com/utf/>, particularly
· <http://czyborra.com/utf/#UTF-8>
· <http://czyborra.com/utf/#UTF-16>
- <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html>, particularly
· <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/unicode.html#utf-8>
Best wishes,
Otto Stolz
