Πιστιόλης Κωνσταντίνος wrote:
There is only one accent mark for modern greek, and it doesn't really
matter
how to draw it. It is just that the greek government admitted that
'tonos' which has replaced the former three accents (oxia, varia,
perispomeni)
is actualy nothing more than 'oxia'.
In other words, formally speaking, oxia replaced both varia and
perispomeni.
...
Some greek terminology which may be useful
------------------------------------------
'Tonos' (τόνος) in greek means 'accent (mark)' in general, so this word was
used to indicate an accent without specifying which one
there are three tonos'es (οξεία, βαρεία, περισπωμένη)
'pnevma' (πνεῦμα) is the breathing mark. There are two of them
-'psili' (ψιλή) smooth breathing mark (comma above) and
-'dasia' (δασεία) rough breathing mark (reversed comma above).
Both do not exist in modern monotonic greek
'ypogegrameni' (ὑπογεγραμμένη) is the iota subscript (like ῃ, ᾳ)
and it also does not exist in monotonic greek.
'monotonic' and 'polytonic' greek, stands for using only one 'tonos'
or all the symbols. Modern greek is officially monotonic, but some
people (old men, the church, men of literature) still use it (me too).
There were two branches of evolution of the greek language. The
informal language of people, called 'dimotiki' (δημοτική, which means
'public') and the formal language of ecudated people 'katharevousa'
(καθαρεύουσα, which means 'pure'). Katharevousa comes in many versions,
depending how close it is to ancient greek.
Today dimotiki is the official language and practically only the
church sometimes uses 'simple' katharevousa (the most modern version).
Church always uses polytonic greek, but it does't distinguish between
oxia and varia (uses oxia only)
I hope it helped.
Feel free to ask any question about greek
You have given a nice overview of Greek accent marks but it does not
seem complete, looking at Unicode, so what about the others?
From UnicodeData.txt, I see that the following combining marks
occur in single or multiple combinations with Greek letters:
DASIA
DIALYTIKA
MACRON
OXIA
PERISPOMENI
PROSGEGRAMMENI
PSILI
TONOS
VARIA
VRACHY
YPOGEGRAMMENI
the following of which have not been mentioned in your overview:
DIALYTIKA
MACRON
PROSGEGRAMMENI
VRACHY
The question that I am interested in most is what attachment of
accent prefix to function keys would you suggest? Is any common
attachment available with common input methods?
I would like to enhance my editor mined with Greek input. Easily,
two or three function keys are available, in shift-mode variations:
Fn, Shift-Fn, Alt-Fn, Alt-Shift-Fn, Control-Fn, Control-Shift-Fn
(where Fn is F2...F12, preferably F5, F6, F7)
With some straight-forward X keyboard configuration, e.g. shifted
digit keys can be added to the choice:
Alt-0, Alt-Shift-0, Control-0, Control-Shift-0,
Alt-Control-0, Alt-Control-Shift-0
(with digits 0...9)
For discussion, I have the following proposal:
(most important?)
TONOS
΄ 0384;GREEK TONOS
F6 (combined with acute for Latin letters)
OXIA
´ 1FFD;GREEK OXIA
Control-F6 (combined with circumflex)
or Alt-F6 because it's an alternative?
VARIA
` 1FEF;GREEK VARIA
Shift-F6 (combined with grave)
PERISPOMENI
῀ 1FC0;GREEK PERISPOMENI
Shift-F5 (combined with tilde)
or F5 because it's one of the more frequent accents?
(less important?)
PSILI
᾿ 1FBF;GREEK PSILI
Control-F5 (because it looks similar to oxia on Control-F6)
DASIA
῾ 1FFE;GREEK DASIA
Shift-F5 (because it looks similar to varia on Shift-F6)
YPOGEGRAMMENI
ͺ 037A;GREEK YPOGEGRAMMENI
Control-F5 (combined with cedilla)
or Control-5 (combined with dot below)
(even less important?)
DIALYTIKA
ϊ 03CA;GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DIALYTIKA
F5 (combined with diaeresis)
or (if F5 preferred for perispomeni) ...?
MACRON
ᾱ 1FB1;GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH MACRON
Control-9 (combined with stroke)
PROSGEGRAMMENI
ι 1FBE;GREEK PROSGEGRAMMENI
Alt-Control-5 (looking like an alternate to ypogegrammeni)
VRACHY
ᾰ 1FB0;GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH VRACHY
Control-7 (combined with breve)
I appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Kind regards,
Thomas Wolff
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Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
