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Greek keyboard


Ben Schmidt

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Hi,

 

I'm wondering if a 'Use Greek keyboard layout for Greek' option could be added, analogous to the 'Use Israeli keyboard layout for Hebrew' option.

 

I find it very frustrating that every time I try to type Greek in Accordance, a number of letters are not where I expect them to be. I have to fiddle around guessing where the letters are, so looking up a word that should take 1 second, takes me 10. I realise you can argue they are in logical places for an English speaker, but given that I'm used to typing with a Greek keyboard layout and do so at something like 50 wpm, it is quite disorienting when things are shuffled around. Since I use Accordance almost exclusively for looking up Greek and Hebrew lexicons, this detracts greatly from my Accordance experience.

 

That said, I do enjoy Accordance and find it very useful.

 

I realise there probably aren't many users in this boat, but hopefully it isn't too difficult and you can manage to squeeze it in some time soon. I would find it extremely useful and would be much happier with Accordance if I could type using a normal keyboard layout.

 

Smiles,

 

Ben.

 

P.S. A Greek keyboard layout works as follows:

 

alpha A

beta B

gamma G

delta D

epsilon E

zeta Z

eta H

theta U

iota I

kappa K

lambda L

mu M

nu M

xi J

omicron O

pi P

rho R

sigma S

terminal sigma W

tau T

upsilon Y

phi F

chi X

psi C

omega V

question mark (i.e. looks like English semicolon) Q

colon (:) shift-Q

 

the ; key accents the next character typed (acts as a so-called 'dead key')

 

other keys that give punctuation are the same as English (including the English question mark shift-/, and colon shift-;)

 

I don't know if there is any way to accent with an accent other than an acute, or if there is a standard method for typing breathings, as these are not used in modern Greek, and I generally don't bother with them except when using a customised keyboard layout of my own in a text editor. I'm sure a simple method could be employed in Accordance, though, if a standard can't be easily found.

 

(Edited to amend some details on punctuation.)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I second this request. :-)

 

In every OTHER program on the mac, I simply use 10.4 (Tiger) International Keyboard Support. It has support for two greek keyboard layouts:

 

Greek

Greek Polytonic

 

The latter is what you want for use with bible greek as it provides for all the accent and breathing marks. I use it quite frequently and assigned Cmd-Ctrl-space to be my hot key to switch languages. That way I can be typing along in English, smack the hot key, type my greek word or phrase, smack the hot key again and keep typing without skipping a beat. Because it's so easy to switch, I very quickly learned the "standard" greek keyboard layout and how to get my accent marks. That's useful everywhere except in Accordance.

 

Accordance uses it's own method for transliterating english letters to Greek. I'd much rather have it use Apple's input source method instead.

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Yeah, using the Mac input methods would be cool, though Accordance would need to automatically switch the keyboard depending on the context. I find using the input methods a bit of a pain, as I have more than two, and it's a pain cycling through them all. Actually, though, looking again, the behaviour seems to have changed now, and is probably better. I may have to start using it more regularly! This could quite improve life! Wow! Thanks for your message that prompted me to investigate this! The problem of having some way to type using a real Greek keyboard in Accordance still remains, though, of course.

 

Smiles,

 

Ben.

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  • 1 year later...

Hello again. I'm wondering if there has been any improvement on this front. I may consider upgrading Accordance if there has been. If not, could it be done? Any chance of an official word on this?

 

Ben.

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Ben,

One easy solution is to have an OS X system keyboard layout that will simply substitute for you the letters used in the standard Greek national keyboard layout with the custom ones used in Helena. That's what I do, except not with the Greek national layout, but with one that converts the old SuperGreek/Graeca layout.

I've done one for you, just such as keyboard layout file but using the Greek national layout, and you can find it here:

 

Greek2HelenaLegacy Keyboard Layout

 

From the ReadMe file:

 

Greek2HelenaLegacy Keyboard

 

This is an OS X system keyboard layout.

It is designed for users who are familiar with the standard Greek national keyboard layout, and would like to use that keyboard layout when typing Greek in the Helena format.

 

Essentially, what the keyboard does is use standard Roman ascii characters, but substitutes from the Greek national layout to Helena's custom layout. In other words, when you type a Xi using the "j" key, the keyboard actually outputs an "x", which is how a Xi is signified in the Helena mapping.

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Thanks heaps Helen and Joe,

 

I will try out your creative/innovative 'translation' solution in the short term, Joe, and look forward to the better integrated Accordance solution in another few weeks, Helen!

 

Smiles,

 

Ben.

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