Re: help on writing Greek characters


elagabalus wrote:
As I don't succeed in pasting valid Greek characters in the posts I send to
this
newsgroup, I decided to utilize the Polytonic Greek keyboard. But when I get
to
write to alt.just.testing for a trial, I can just see a series of squares.. I
tried with Arial Unicode MS and Times New Roman fonts.

Seeing that you easily use Unicode, why not make life simpler?
No polytonic keyboard works well with all. I tried everything and went
bananas. Some classical NGs waste a large part of their time discussing
code pages and charsets but continue sending messages that look full of
stupid little squares to most people.

Now, there is no real need for a polytonic keyboard, and the usual
monotonic (modern) Greek keyboard doesn't have that kind of problems.

People who can read Greek won't have any problem reading without the
accessory marks: if they can read, they know the rules of prosody and
the placement of signs. To a minority who have learned Modern Greek
only, whatever is understandable in polytonic is just as understandable
in monotonic. So, almost no drawbacks and the big advantage of easy
reading.

Also, transliterating to Latin characters according to the classic
rules works just fine anyway. In native Greek NGs, most correspondence
is in Latin transliteration (not classical, but by keyboard position)
to make sure everyone without exception can read, no matter the
computer and the system.

Below monotonic, Latin and Modern keyboard samples to test
understandability:

1. Ανδρα μοι έννεπε, Μούσα, πολύτροπον,
ος μάλα πολλά
πλάγχθη, επεί Τροίης ιερόν πτολίεθρον
έπερσεν '

2. Ándra moi énnepe, Moûsa, polýtropon, hos mála pollá
plánchthê, epeí Troíês hierón ptolíethron épersen
pollôn d'anthrôpôn....

No problemo.

3. Andra moi énnepe, Moûsa, polútropon, 'os mála pollá
plágx0h, epeí Troíhs 'ierón ptolíe0ron épersen '
pollwn d'an0rwpwn íden ástea kai nóon égnw,

Not too hard either.

.

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