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Best W10 Greek Keyboard With Diacritics


JohnABarnett

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It is becoming more important for me to (using Windows 10) type in Greek with diacritical marks is becoming more important. I am currently using the Windows language pack Ελληνικα, which so far as I can tell does not include diacritics. I have installed and tried the Keyman Greek keyboard, but apparently Windows 10 updates have "broken" support for it (again, so far as I can tell). 

 

So, brilliant thinker that I am (!!), it occurs to me that I should turn for help to people some of whom, uh, do this every day.

 

To those who do, what language pack or utility are you using to type in Greek with diacritics? What do you find easiest and best to use?

 

My most likely application will be typing in Microsoft Word.

 

Thanks for any help.

Edited by JohnABarnett
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Hi John,

 

By far the easiest way, and the one which, in principle, is conserved over pretty much all platforms, is Unicode. I work with Mac, but the principle is the same with Windows. Go to language settings and selection Greek polytonic keyboard. You can change fonts and use the one which suits you best. BTW, the same goes for Hebrew

 

Hope that helps. Have fun writing in Greek!

 

Ἔρρωσο

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A Unicode keyboard mapping is the way to go, I agree. For both Greek and Hebrew there are multiple choices of keyboard layouts that do Unicode. For Greek I use the one designed by John Schwandt which is available here : https://biblicalgreek.org/grammar/keyboard/. You can use the included one in Windows but I find John's accenting to be easier to work with. I'm also not sure if the Windows polytonic keyboard covers all diacritics - I cannot remember anymore, it's been ages since I used it.

 

For Hebrew I use the Ezra SIL keyboard from SIL available here at SBL : https://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_SBLHebrew.aspx. This will have the same layout as the Keyman you are used to. The keyboard itself is http://www.sbl-site.org/Fonts/BiblicalHebrewSIL.zip. Other people use an SI 1452 compliant Israeli keyboard. I'm pretty sure that's the standard Israeli keyboard on most computers these days for modern Hebrew. I am not familiar with its layout so don't use it.

 

Thx

D

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Thanks Donald. I had tried that before but the list that came up in Windows 10 did not show the Greek Polytonic Keyboard.

 

However, for some reason this time when I clicked on the "plus" sign to add a keyboard this time instead of giving me a long list of all languages it gave me a choice of three Greek keyboards, one of which was in fact Greek Polytonic. So now it seems I have it working.

 

Thanks so much for your help.

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A Unicode keyboard mapping is the way to go, I agree. For both Greek and Hebrew there are multiple choices of keyboard layouts that do Unicode. For Greek I use the one designed by John Schwandt which is available here : https://biblicalgreek.org/grammar/keyboard/. You can use the included one in Windows but I find John's accenting to be easier to work with. I'm also not sure if the Windows polytonic keyboard covers all diacritics - I cannot remember anymore, it's been ages since I used it.

 

For Hebrew I use the Ezra SIL keyboard from SIL available here at SBL : https://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_SBLHebrew.aspx. This will have the same layout as the Keyman you are used to. The keyboard itself is http://www.sbl-site.org/Fonts/BiblicalHebrewSIL.zip. Other people use an SI 1452 compliant Israeli keyboard. I'm pretty sure that's the standard Israeli keyboard on most computers these days for modern Hebrew. I am not familiar with its layout so don't use it.

 

Thx

D

 

Thanks Daniel. After finally being able to install the Greek Polytonic Keyboard I did download the Schwandt keyboard. I will try it out since it does look like it might be easier to use.

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I'm using the latest Win10, and Tavultesoft Keyman runs fine. The Galaxie Greek and Hebrew is by far the one you want to use. It has all the diacritics and the most intuitive way of entering them.

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Thanks, mgvh. Not sure why it works fine for you and I have heretofore been unable to get it to work. I will try again and see if there is something I'm missing.

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I have used these fonts in Windows for years:

https://www.bibleworks.com/fonts.html

 

Still the best IMHO. Should have the diacritics as well

Do note, however, that those BibleWorks fonts are the old TrueType style of fonts and not Unicode fonts. I do not recommend them for sharing files with others, since they would need to install that font also.

For broadest reliable sharing, I've ended up just using Times New Roman.

The Cardo font is free and designed for biblical scholars and is supported in Google docs. It's a nice font, especially for display purposes, but it is not good for bold and italic faces.

A very well designed and attractive font is the one released by the Society of Biblical Literature HERE. The BibLit set has it all.

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Don't forget about our free Accordance Font, which uses the Accordance glyphs in a proper unicode setting, covering Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and other character sets.  We gave it a massive update with Accordance 12.3, fixing the leading issues, rendering in other apps, additional characters, etc.  We need to update this page with the newer version, but if you have Accordance 12.3, you should be able to get the new version.

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Do note, however, that those BibleWorks fonts are the old TrueType style of fonts and not Unicode fonts. I do not recommend them for sharing files with others, since they would need to install that font also.

For broadest reliable sharing, I've ended up just using Times New Roman.

The Cardo font is free and designed for biblical scholars and is supported in Google docs. It's a nice font, especially for display purposes, but it is not good for bold and italic faces.

A very well designed and attractive font is the one released by the Society of Biblical Literature HERE. The BibLit set has it all.

This is true- I usually send everything I work in as PDFs so the other person (usually my teachers) do not have to have the font. It really depends on what you are trying to do.

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  • 8 months later...

Hi everybody. I am trying to go over to Unicode fonts. For Hebrew I was able to get the charts indicating where to find the vowels and accents with Ezra SIL. For the Greek I cannot find a chart which corresponds either to what Accordance gives me or SBL Greek. So my question is a double one: first what is exactly the relationship between the keyboard I select from the Input menu and the font I choose. The first one seems to "overcome" the second. The other side of the question is: is the only Input Keyboard I was able to download, that is Greek - Polytonic the right one for any Greek font ? And third (I know...) : Is there anywhere out there a chart indicating the placement of vowels and accents in Greek either for Accordance or SBL Greek ?

Thanks for any future help! One full day becomes a lot of time consuming for this minor matter...  :)

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Hi Yohanan,

 

  1. The keyboard mapping that you use establishes the character codes that each key or key combination produces. If the mapping is designed to produce Unicode then any Unicode font have glyphs for the codes produced will display you text more or less as expected. If it does not produce Unicode then you need to make sure that the keyboard mapping and the font match. This second case ought to never occur these days. All keyboards should be producing Unicode. Unicode itself is a very large topic and I don't know how much you really want to know. But perhaps suffice it to say Unicode attempts to provide a unique encoding for each character in every language that is or has been written. This actually overstates the case a good bit in practical terms but the basic idea is that. These are represented by what are called codepoints. Unique code points exist for a very large number of characters - overall the total space can accommodate about 1 million distinct glyphs - a glyph is the actual thing you see in the document when you type. Nowhere that many are actually currently in use.

 

  To make this a bit more concrete, GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA has code 952. Any Unicode font, properly called, if it supports this codepoint, must display a glyph that represents a GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA. And thus when your keyboard produces code 952 when you hit key U on a US English keyboard (this is the common mapping for θ) you should see a θ if the font you are using supports that codepoint.

 

  I hope this isn't too much. But the point I'm trying to get to is this; your keyboard produces a number and your font determines what that number looks like when displayed. Because of Unicode you may choose different fonts that support the same codepoints and get fonts that have serifs or have thicker or thinner or taller or shorter letters or whathaveyou. This means that you may choose a Unicode keyboard mapping that you like the place of the letters and diacritic marks on - one that suits how you like to type. Then you may choose a Unicode font that produces letters you like the style, readability etc. of.

 

  Sorry that was rather long winded. I hope helpful.

 

  2. This is a bit easier. For each keyboard mapping (or keyboard as they call them) that you can get there is usually a key that shows you which physical keys map to which letter or diacritic mark. It will also tell you if you need to use shift states or multiple keys to get a certain character, or a character with a particular combination of diacritics.  There is normally a document (often a PDF of it). A week or so ago I switched the mapping I use for Windows and had to hunt around for a document which luckily I found. Here is one for the Mac keyboard https://apps.carleton.edu/its/flt/assets/GRKpolytonic_Mac.pdf. I got the windows one from this site and it was pretty accurate. You'll have to try it out to be sure. Accordance documents their keyboard here http://accordancefiles2.com/helpfiles/OSX12/Default.htm#topics/11_ggtt/entering_greek_characters.htm?Highlight=keyboard. SBL has a doc here https://www.sbl-site.org/educational/BiblicalFonts_FAQ.aspx. I note that contrary to what I said about they use the T key for theta. Oh well.... that's what I get for not using their Greek keyboard :)

 

  On Mac (and on Windows too) you can also display the keyboard key mapping on screen - just go to the language icon in the menu bar and click on the currently selected language. In the pull down menu select Show Keyboard Viewer.

 

Thx

D

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  • 2 weeks later...

I created my own layouts for Hebrew and Greek using kbdedit. It's not free, but for me the flexibility was important. As fonts I use Ezra SIL and Gentium.

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I created my own layouts for Hebrew and Greek using kbdedit. It's not free, but for me the flexibility was important. As fonts I use Ezra SIL and Gentium.

 

I'd not seen this one. It looks really good. Hmmmm.

 

Thx

D

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