Re[2]: [sword-devel] Greek texts

[Brook Humphrey]

Hello Paul,

Tuesday, July 18, 2000, 5:05:25 AM, you wrote:

PG> Chris Little wrote:
>> 
>> With the exception of our locked NA27/UBS4 B-Greek text, which was I believe
>> produced by Troy, I did all the Greek texts using the files from Broman.
>> There are, I've been made aware, problems in the character mapping and
>> probably the transliteration as well (things like Chis and Xis swapped).

PG> Grrr!  Don't get me started!  :-)  Actually you have gotten me started -
PG> see below.

>> So I really wouldn't mind revisiting the whole Greek text subject and
>> redoing them all.

PG> Well, neither would i.  I want to make them much more readable (with
PG> capitals, punctuation, etc.) and include morph codes, though. 
PG> Interested in working on a database?  I've already collected some texts
PG> and made a start on the data model.

>> I'd also like to get away from using Symbol as a font, even
>> though it's pre-loaded on every Windows box.

PG> Easy on Windows - just provide a different font.  Hard on Linux - what
PG> other font are you going to use?  How are you going to ensure that it's
PG> present on everyone's Linux box?  Are you going to force frontend
PG> developers to use FreeType and a particular TTF, or just let them work
PG> it out themselves?  Are you going to make everyone use xfsft?  What
PG> about other platforms?

Mandrake is easy with fonts also at least just as easy as windows. it
includes a utility called drakfont that will even find ttf fonts on
your window partition and use them.


>> I'm certainly open to suggestions of what new texts and character mappings
>> should be used to create new versions of these.

PG> For theta, psi, chi, and upsilon, use the scheme adhered to by the
PG> B-Greek discussion list
PG> <http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek/transliteration.txt>.  They do not
PG> distinguish the final sigma.

PG> There are commercial fonts that use the B-Greek mapping:
PG> - Bwgrkl (from BibleWorks, i think)
PG> - Linguists Software's Graeca/GraecaII (from http://www.logos.com)
PG> - Galaxie Software's Greek <http://www.bible.org/galaxie>.
PG> The latter two map the final sigma to double quotes ("), while Bwgrkl
PG> uses lowercase v.

PG> The free fonts that are available around the place have some rather
PG> silly mappings:
PG> - SIL Galatia maps H to rough breathing and J to eta (i understand why,
PG> but i think lookalike should override soundalike in this case, since
PG> rough breathing isn't a letter)
PG> - OLBGrk maps Q and Y the other way around
PG> - SPIonic swaps X and C (God only knows why)

PG> I've recently found a couple of (seemingly free) Greek fonts that use
PG> the B-Greek mapping:
PG> - EGreek
PG> <http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Egerton/egerton-greek.html>.  No
PG> license seems to be attached to this.
PG> - GreekFP <http://www.paradigm-sw.com/gfp/font.htm>.

PG> The latter is a better quality font and uses the same final sigma as
PG> "Graeca" and "Greek", but the vendor probably needs to be contacted to
PG> ensure that we would be able to redistribute the font.  It says it is
PG> available for non-commercial use only (which presumably we qualify for),
PG> but there isn't any indication as to whether redistribution is permitted
PG> or anything like that.

PG> I think B-Greek encoding is the way to go - make people who want to use
PG> something different convert with a font map.  This gives the best chance
PG> of readable output if no Greek font is available.

PG> Final sigma is a hard one - you could either encode it as a double
PG> quote, or not distinguish it and let the frontend programs deal with the
PG> problem by mapping an S at the end of a word to the appropriate
PG> character for their font (or maybe do nothing).

PG> Paul
PG> ---------
PG> "He must become greater; i must become less." - John 3:30
PG> http://www.bigfoot.com/~paulgear



-- 
Best regards,
 Brook                            mailto:thelinu@thelinuxstop.com