Greek input methods

Go to The list of input methods, next or previous page.

Greek input methods

Thessalonica currently provides 3 input methods for polytonic Greek, all based on different key mappings traditionally used for typing Greek in TeX/LaTeX.

Greek Babel (ASCII Based)

This input method uses the following mapping for Greek letters (this mapping is well known for anybody who ever typed Greek in LaTeX with standard CM-based fonts (SL, KD or CB):

Keyboard	Greek		Keyboard	Greek
[a]	α	Alpha	[n]	ν	Nu
[b]	β	Beta	[x]	ξ	Xi
[g]	γ	Gamma	[o]	ο	Omicron
[d]	δ	Delta	[p]	π	Pi
[e]	ε	Epsilon	[r]	ρ	Rho
[z]	ζ	Zeta	[c] [s]	ς σ	Sigma
[h]	η	Eta	[t]	τ	Tau
[j]	θ	Theta	[u]	υ	Upsilon
[i]	ι	Iota	[f]	φ	Phi
[k]	κ	Kappa	[q]	χ	Chi
[l]	λ	Lambda	[y]	ψ	Psi
[m]	μ	Mu	[w]	ω	Omega

Note that, unlike in LaTeX, automatic substitution of final sigma is not implemented: you should always type either ‘s’ or ‘c’ manually.

Accents and punctuation marks are mapped as follows:

Key	Accent
[<]	rough breathing
[>]	smooth breathing
[']	acute
[`]	grave
[~]	circumflex
["]	dieresis
[\|]	iota subscript
[?]	Greek question mark
[;]	Greek ano teleia
['][']	Greek coronis

Exactly as in LaTeX, you can type accents and breathings in any sequence before a vowel, but iota subscriptum is always typed after the accented vowel.

Greek Babel (Greek National Based)

This is another version of Babel-styled Greek input method, commonly used in Greece. It is based on the Greek National (monotonic) keyboard, but extends it with polytonic accents, mapped according to the same conventions, used in LaTeX.

In Thessalonica 3.0 this input method has been redesigned to work above the standard Greek keyboard. For this reason it no longer provides any mappings for basic Greek letters (which are expected to be already available on your keyboard), and only maps a few keys to accents and punctuation marks:

Key	Accent
[<]	rough breathing
[>]	smooth breathing
[`]	grave
[~]	circumflex
[\|]	iota subscript
[']	Greek coronis

Note that there are no special keys for the acute accent and the dieresis, as your system keyboard should be responsible for producing accented characters with these marks. However, this input methods performs some additional processing for monotonic accented characters:

substitutes combinations with polytonic oxia instead of their counterparts with monotonic tonos;
combines characters produced by the system keyboard with previously typed diacritics. Thus the smooth breathing (Greek psili) U+1FBF followed by small alpha with tonos U+03AC produces small alpha with psili and oxia U+1F04.

Greek Ibycus

This input method was contributed by Pierre MacKay, to whom all comments and suggestions should be directed. The mapping for Greek letters it uses is derived ultimately from Beta-Code, the basic coding of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. but modified to escape the requirement that all alphabetic characters be in upper case. (A fossil reminder of IBM punch cards.)

Keyboard	Greek		Keyboard	Greek
[a]	α	Alpha	[n]	ν	Nu
[b]	β	Beta	[c]	ξ	Xi
[g]	γ	Gamma	[o]	ο	Omicron
[d]	δ	Delta	[p]	π	Pi
[e]	ε	Epsilon	[r]	ρ	Rho
[z]	ζ	Zeta	[j] [s]	ς σ	Sigma
[h]	η	Eta	[t]	τ	Tau
[q]	θ	Theta	[u]	υ	Upsilon
[i]	ι	Iota	[f]	φ	Phi
[k]	κ	Kappa	[x]	χ	Chi
[l]	λ	Lambda	[y]	ψ	Psi
[m]	μ	Mu	[w]	ω	Omega

Automatic substitution of final for medial sigma is implemented before space, period, comma, semicolon and question mark.

Diacriticals are always entered after the affected character, and generate, wherever possible, a composite character with combining class 0. Only one character from each of the three classes below is permitted and they must be in class order. (The exclamation point used for questionable characters in papyrology and epigraphy does not actually follow this rule, but should be treated as if it did.) Iota and upsilon with dieresis and acute accent are entered as predicted by this table with the sequence (letter)[+][']. All sequences are in the order used to describe the composite character in the Unicode standard.

Key	Conventional (Unicode) name	Order
[(] (parenleft)	Rough breathing (DASIA)	1
[)] (parenright)	Smooth Breathing (PSILI)	1
[+] (plus)	General modifier (DIERESIS, etc)	1
[' (quotesingle)]	Acute (OXIA)	2
[`] (grave)	Grave (VARIA)	2
[=] (equals)	Perispomeni (PERISPOMENI)	2
[\|] (bar)	Iota Subscript (YPOGEGRAMMENI)	3
[!] (exclam)	(COMBINING DOT BELOW)	3

Greek punctuation marks, numeric and archaic characters can be produced as follows:

Key	Greek	Name
[?]	;	Greek question mark
[;]	·	Greek ano teleia
[C+] [c+]	Ϲϲ	Lunate sigma
[K+] [k+]	Ϙϙ	Koppa (archaic)
[S+] [s+]	Ϡϡ	Sampi
[V+] [v+]	Ϛϛ	Stigma
[V] [v]	Ϝϝ	Digamma

Ambiguous instances such as [a][)], which might be interpreted as either alpha with smooth breathing or alpha followed by right parenthesis, can be disambiguated by pressing the ambiguous character a second time. The following triplets offer an extended range of punctuation:

[`] grave accent, [`][`] open single quote, [`][`][`] open double quote;
['] acute accent, [']['] close single quote, ['][']['] close double quote;
[.] period, [.][.] two dot leader, [.][.][.] ellipsis;
[-] hyphen, [-][-] FIGURE DASH (≈ en dash), [-][-][-] em dash;
[<] editor’s left angle bracket, (U+2329), [<][<] left single guillemet, [<][<][<] left guillemet;
[>] editor’s right angle bracket, (U+232A), [>][>] right single guillemet, [>][>][>] right guillemet.

A very small number of characters can be escaped using the backslash:

[\][v] and [\][V] give upper and lower GREEK NUMERICAL SIGN. [\][[] and [\][]] give floor brackets for quoted inscriptions;
[\][u] provides a BREVE, and [\][=] provides a MACRON. Some of the more complex Greek prosody signs have been accepted into Unicode 4.1 in the Miscellaneous Technical page, following U+23D1. They can be found in the Insert Special Characters pull-down if the font provides them.

For further information about Ibycus and its associated (non-Unicode) font, or to make suggestions, email Pierre MacKay.

Go to The list of input methods, next or previous page.