Bill Mounce
For an Informed Love of God
For an Informed Love of God
Here is a brief discussion of unicode and why it is important. For a detailed discussion please see Rod Decker's page.
Before the unicode standard, it seemed that everyone had different ideas of where the Grek letters should go on the keyboard. Is the "x" key the ξ or the χ? This meant that whenever you sent someone a word processing document, you had to make sure they had the same font.
The unicode standard decided where every Greek letter and combination of accents should go. This is technically called a "code page." There is one for "Greek and Coptic," and another one called "Greek Extended" that includes all the breathings and accents. On the Macintosh, you can see these in the Character Viewer.
But you still need to access these code pages if you are going to type Greek. The problem is that thousands of people have been using the TekniaGreek keyboard for years, which, for example, places the ξ on the "x," the smooth + acute combination (ἄ) on the "[" key, etc.
Enter the TekniaGreek Unicode Keyboard. When it is installed in your Mac, you be able to use the keys you are used to but will be typing in unicode.
The key to understanding unicode fonts is that a single font has English and Greek (and Hebrew and possibly many other languages). Unlike the non-unicode way of getting to Greek that had one font for English and one font for Greek, a unicode font has the different languages all in one font. So how do you access the Greek? You don't switch fonts; you switch keyboards, English to Greek, and then back to English.
Note: not all unicode fonts have all languages. Some will have all, for example, the European languages, but not necessarily Greek and Hebrew, or they will have English and Greek but not Hebrew. So you need a complete unicode font.
We are working on our own. Teknia will be a Palatino-based font with Greek (and eventually Hebrew) that is optimized for print, and TekniaWeb will be optimized for screen display. But they are a ways off (unless some font meister wants to help me)
But there are many good fonts out there that have English and Greek in the same font, and sometimes even Hebrew.
Check the fonts out with the Character Viewer to confirm they have Greek and Hebrew.