Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

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Lukas
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Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Lukas »

Does anyone have a recommendation for Classical Greek word processing software? A couple years ago, I downloaded some free software from the Internet. The trouble is that I can get the acute accent to work but cannot get the circumflex or grave accents to work. Ι also cannot get most, if not all, diacritical marks to work.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by RandyGibbons »

The two options I am familiar with are GreekKeys 2015 from the Society for Classical Studies (SCS, formerly the American Philological Association), purchasable for a modest charge, and the Greek Polytonic Unicode keyboard which is free for Windows (search on 'Greek Polytonic Keyboard' for a long list of sites that will help you set it up).

GreekKeys (my personal favorite) is available for the Mac and for Windows. Beyond that, I can't speak for the Mac. I know from your other post that you're learning Greek from the Mastronarde textbook. Just fyi, Mastonarde is the one who coded GreekKeys.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

For the Mac, there is a free Greek polytonic keyboard included that works fine.
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

What I would really like is something like this: http://www.typegreek.com/,
but in Word (as the website has the obvious vice of not saving your work).
Typing diacritics is cumbersome and painful in any package I am currently aware for Word (including the two listed above).

Besides that my requests for improvement would be only small - for example, even the website I linked doesn't seem to let you type macrons, which I would like to do (at the same time as accents and breathings). And there's no letter input for digamma, yod, koppa; perhaps most grievous, no option to input lunate sigmas. But it's so much easier and better than actually typing in Word that I've never managed to wean myself off it.

e.g. one of the packages above expects you to decide on the breathing+diacritic combination desired before you input a word-initial vowel. It's one thing to think of the 'h' sound, which occurs before the vowel phonetically, but the accent? Which occurs on the vowel? And to input them at the same time? Might seem like I'm just being difficult but it's hard to imagine anyone being really comfortable typing like that.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Lukas »

Thank you for the replies. I should have mentioned that I am working with Windows 8.1 and using Microsoft Word. Sorry I left that out.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by RandyGibbons »

Then I think you'll need to go with one or the other (or both) of the options I mentioned. Sorry that Callisper finds them burdensome, but I type with them about as easily as I type English (as do dozens of others I know) - practice makes perfect.

I'm amazed Microsoft let you get away with remaining on Windows 8 (unless their diagnosis concludes your computer wouldn't support 10 - to my chagrin at the time, they really forced, literally, 10 on my system). If you opt for GreekKeys 2015, just make sure it is compatible with Windows 8, though I'm next to certain it is. (GreekKeys 2015 was a significant rewrite of the package to make it fully Unicode.)

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by bcdavasconcelos »

In both Windows and OS X you can type in Ancient Greek after enabling the polytonic greek keyboard in your system's preferences.

For those who use OS X and find typing diacriticals cumbersome, you can always use Typinator to do just that for you. You'll type the word without any accent, and it will add them for you. Just install it and add the Polytonic Greek set (you'll find it at the ergonis.com website in the "Extras" section).
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

Callisper wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 3:37 am Besides that my requests for improvement would be only small - for example, even the website I linked doesn't seem to let you type macrons, which I would like to do (at the same time as accents and breathings). And there's no letter input for digamma, yod, koppa; perhaps most grievous, no option to input lunate sigmas. But it's so much easier and better than actually typing in Word that I've never managed to wean myself off it.
Digamma (ϝ), koppa (ϙ), the lunate sigma (ϲ) along with some other letters are available in the Hoplite Polytonic Greek Keyboard, on the app store. The macron (̄) is there and breve (̆) too, besides the feet for poetry.

What is yod in a Greek context? Is it the iota subscript without a vowel (ie precombining) (ͅ)?
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

Anyone able to suggest a font or other type-face in which one can type Greek using the 'circumflex' symbol for a circumflex accent rather than the tilde?

That is, I want not ã but â (obviously with Latin 'a' substituted for Greek alpha) etc.

(A lot of recent modern editions prefer the â and with good reason.)
bcdavasconcelos wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 4:34 pm For those who use OS X and find typing diacriticals cumbersome, you can always use Typinator to do just that for you. You'll type the word without any accent, and it will add them for you.
ἑκηβόλος wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:58 am the Hoplite Polytonic Greek Keyboard, on the app store.
I meant to thank you both for these suggestions, the first of which looks interesting (though I can't realistically believe it will work with much accuracy) and the second is very useful.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by jeidsath »

Callisper wrote: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:20 pm (A lot of recent modern editions prefer the â and with good reason.)
Really? Who is doing that? Anyway, Unicode as the Latin "Combining Circumflex Accent", if you want to make an alpha with the Latin circumflex: α̂. Any modern font should handle it. Typing it may be more complicated.
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

jeidsath wrote: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:39 pm Really? Who is doing that? Anyway, Unicode as the Latin "Combining Circumflex Accent", if you want to make an alpha with the Latin circumflex: α̂. Any modern font should handle it. Typing it may be more complicated.
It looks clumsy & ugly in our posts, yes, but this is a pretty widespread practice nowadays and looks fine in print.

It may be that the use of the circumflex symbol for the accent was instituted, or at least popularized, by Porson. His editions are the oldest I can find them in - not that I've looked that closely - and he was a known reformer of Greek calligraphy. Some online examples: https://archive.org/details/hecuba184000euri (Porson's Hecuba); contrast https://archive.org/details/euripidistragoe00hermgoog, Hermann (Porson's contemporary).

It also appears that there exists a 'Porson Greek' font, based on his hand. As we might expect, this font nicely reproduces the circumflex symbol for the accent. I remain surprised that more such fonts are not out there and that the majority of online Greek has tildes representing circumflexes.

As I understand, the argument for the circumflex (symbol) is that it represents the pitch variation likely to have been present in the accent (up then down) - this is why the acute is '/' - while the tilde does not (implying perhaps 'up then down then back up'?). This seemed convincing to me when I heard it a few months back and since then I've written circumflexes (while typing with tildes - we can agree it's not a massive problem).

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by jeidsath »

Porson's is different from the Latin circumflex, being rounded. So more like an inverted breve. That's quite normal and actually based on medieval bookhand. Other manuscript perispomena look more like the tilde, and early Greek printing certainly did.

I certainly wouldn't recommend typing Greek with a Latin circumflex, or even an inverted breve, as it would mess up digital search and future text conversions. Instead just download a Porson-style font for whatever you want to display.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

Callisper wrote: Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:20 pm Anyone able to suggest a font or other type-face in which one can t̶y̶p̶e̶ [display] Greek using the 'circumflex' symbol for a circumflex accent rather than the tilde?
I don't think you're asking the right question. No offense intended, but I've emmended your question, and will answer what I have reformulated.

The TLG site provides hyperlinks to samples of how Greek will be displayed using various fonts. (Toggle: View sample - Hide sample.) According to that list Palatino displays a tilde, and Times a circumflex, etc. The Porson font that you mentioned is to be found in that list at 35. Various fonts.

On my friends computer, in Word, moving the mouse pointer down the list of fonts in the home tab changes the text to those fonts. If you have access to a computer and it does that, you highlight a string of characters with circumflexes / tilde and hover up and down the list of fonts till you find one you like.

If you are particular about making sure people see a font with a circumflex rather than tilde on your website, you can define which font is displayed using CSS.
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

ἑκηβόλος wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:06 am I don't think you're asking the right question. No offense intended, but I've emmended[emended] your question, and will answer what I have reformulated.
Thanks for the remarks. Wrt to your correction, as your post mostly explained how I can produce (not display) Greek with whatever appearance I like, a follow-up explaining how I can get Greek to be displayed how I like as I read it would be nice. (e.g. inverted breves instead of tildes when I read this website?)

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

Callisper wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:14 am
ἑκηβόλος wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 2:06 am emmended[emended]
Ha ha. My spelling is worse than Chaucer's. If you want to do the strike through thing - either e̶m̶m̶e̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ or e̷m̷m̷e̷n̷d̷e̷d̷ - you could try fsymbols.
Callisper wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 3:14 am Wrt to your correction, as your post mostly explained how I can produce (not display) Greek with whatever appearance I like, a follow-up explaining how I can get Greek to be displayed how I like as I read it would be nice. (e.g. inverted breves instead of tildes when I read this website?)
I'm not sure of the relationships between CSS and browser preferences, but changing the font preferences for how a web page is displayed is a pretty straightforward thing. You could find one of the fonts on your system that you like, then set that as the default for Greek in the browser preferences. Back in the day under Windows 95 (or 98 or ME - I can't remember now), I used to set up Titus cyber bit basic as my browser's default, but now all systems come with the extended Greek character set preinstalled.

I wonder why the shape of the circumflex matters, though. The diacritics are not a guide for reading Greek, anymore than the aphabet is. Historically speaking, they are a way of letting a reader recognise which word in the language that you are expected to produce. Looking at it another way, the circumflex, like any other diacritic or letter in Greek (unlike Korean, for example) is a symbolic representation of the sound, not a graphical approximation of how the sound is to be made. You should be able to produce language now with your level of experience and interest in composition, using the written word as a guide to what you are saying. In other words, reading is closer to speaking than to decoding. Compare that to your native speaker practice. Do you notice the font when you read English, do you prefer one form or graphical representation of "a" over another because it looks more similar to the way it is pronounced? I am assuming you just read the words with "a" in them for meaning, using the type of language that you use in speaking. Reading directs the flow of language, rather than produces it.

The only time we really stop and concentrate on the words is when they are somehow new or unfamiliar.

As much as you can develop your speaking in a language, you will be able to read that language as language. As much as you can actively produce the language, you will acquire the skills to do the same things that you can do in your "real" languages.
τί δὲ ἀγαθὸν τῇ πομφόλυγι συνεστώσῃ ἢ κακὸν διαλυθείσῃ;

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

ἑκηβόλος wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:10 pm I wonder why the shape of the circumflex matters, though. The diacritics are not a guide for reading Greek, anymore than the aphabet is.
I explained the reason above. Of course I read Greek words as words, not combinations of letters. It remains the case that an opportunity to represent the correct pitch modulation should be taken if offered over an alternative which eschews it. It is not harmful to think of an acute as a rise in pitch and as a circumflex as a rise then fall; and unlike with vocabulary and the forms of words, no amount of reading or producing Greek makes this any more deeply internalised*, so it's nice to have it in notation.

(I also find the inverted breve easier than the tilde to distinguish from the macron on paper, whether in my own handwriting or others'.)


*I except those who can speak Greek with correct pitch accent modulation. That type of production will internalise the modulation, of course. But I have never encountered anyone who speaks Greek at all well who employs pitch accent rather than stress accent, let alone sounding natural doing it and getting the modulation correct and audibly so. Reciting Greek with pitch accent does not count and for the record I've not heard anyone doing that manage to sound like they're communicating in a language.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by ἑκηβόλος »

Callisper wrote: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:12 amfor the record I've not heard anyone doing that manage to sound like they're communicating in a language.
Perhaps you can be the first. It's great that you seem to have a very clear mental model of what you want to achieve. It shouldn't take more than a decade or two of deliberate training to reach the goals that [you] find others have not.
Last edited by ἑκηβόλος on Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by nate.a »

Regarding the original post -
Lukas wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2019 2:02 am Does anyone have a recommendation for Classical Greek word processing software?
- I might suggest the 'MultiKey' Add-in developed by Stefan Hagel. I use it occasionally (though polytonic keyboard is my default) since it has readily accessible digamma, koppa, and sampi. as well as other symbols used in textual criticism. I found it difficult switching between polytonic and MultiKey since Hagel has chosen his own system for keys based on the German keyboard (e.g. ö, ü, ä keys correspond to ῳ, ῃ, ᾳ). If, like me, you're not accustomed to using a German keyboard things can get a little frustrating.

What I really like about MultiKey is that it contains loads more alphabets and writing systems which you can switch between with simple keyboard shortcuts. These include Hebrew, Latin (with diacritics), Arabic, Runic, Armenian, Coptic, and even Devanagari. Even though I personally can only dream of learning these languages others will certainly find this feature useful. What's more is that it's free.

I'm not sure if you can stack diacritics like you wanted, Lukas, as I haven't played around with it enough.

Nathaniel

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by will.dawe »

For typing Greek (Koine) or Latin I would recommend Keyman [no links in first 10 posts].

It is a product of SIL International, supports over 1000 scripting systems, works in Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iPhone; has optional on-screen keyboard. It's a free and mature software (developed since 1993).

I use it mostly for typing Latin (macrons) and only on rare occasions for Polytonic Greek, so can't say with confidence it covers all cases of working with Attic-Koine texts (there is no way to type digamma, yod, koppa, or lunate sigmas), but I find it easy to learn and intuitive.

I personally use the following layouts (they have online versions for testing):
  • Galaxie Greek (Phonetic)
  • EuroLatin (SIL)
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by RandyGibbons »

Hi Will.

As far as the original question goes, it's for now a moot point, since Lukas has opted for GreekKeys2015.

But strictly out of curiosity, from fooling around with SIL a few years ago, I recall they had two polytonic Greek keyboards, one built on MS Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC - this is the framework Mastronarde used for GreekKeys), one on their own framework (Keyman). To your knowledge, are you using the latter?

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Callisper »

RandyGibbons wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:13 pm As far as the original question goes, it's for now a moot point, since Lukas has opted for GreekKeys2015.
Hardly a reason to nix a productive discussion - especially given that Lukas may well change his mind on suggestion of anything better. (And didn't exactly sound firm in extolling GreekKeys2015 in the last remark, 'I think I will use Greekkeys2015 and then maybe the typrgreek web page to cut out the spaces, or maybe I will just use the web page [sc. TypeGreek].')

I for one enjoy reading about all the options posted up here, seeing how they function and differ from one another, etc.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by RandyGibbons »

I do too. That's why I asked for a little more detail on the SIL option.

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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by will.dawe »

RandyGibbons wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2019 11:13 pm I recall they had two polytonic Greek keyboards, one built on MS Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC - this is the framework Mastronarde used for GreekKeys), one on their own framework (Keyman). To your knowledge, are you using the latter?
I use Keyman on Linux, and it provides several keyboards for Ancient Greek, layout made by SIL is only one of them:
  • keyman.com/keyboards/languages/grc
I do not know real difference between them, or which one has more features. I use "Galaxie Greek (Phonetic)" because it simply works and covers all my needs in typing Greek:
  • keyman.com/keyboards/galaxie_greek_positional
  • manual: help.keyman.com/keyboard/galaxie_greek_positional
  • on-line demo: keymanweb.com/#el,Keyboard_galaxie_greek_positional
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Psilord79 »

Although old, there is an interesting exposition on the Greek circumflex and its Unicode representation to be found at http://www.opoudjis.net/unicode/gkdiacritics.html (§1.2).
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Re: Classical Greek Recommended Word Processing Software

Post by Luiz H Guimaraes »

Hi,
TavultSoftware (keyman.com) has several word processors for ancient Greek that can be used in conjunction with Microsoft Word.
They are free.
Best wishes,
Luiz

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