Re: [NTG-context] Ancient Greek

Wednesday, August 18, 2004 Steffen Wolfrum wrote:

Hi,

I am about to edit a book with quotes in ancient (polyphonic) greek. How can this be done in ConTeXt?

Searching for answers I found the long and painful thread started by Thomas A. Schmitz almost one year ago.

Do we have an easier way available today?

'Andra moi >'ennepe, Mo~usa, pol'utropon, >'os m'ala poll`a\hfill\break

Download Claudio Beccari's fonts. (cbgreek) Use the attached cbgreek.tex typescript file (Hans, maybe it's the case to add it to the distribution?) and you should then be able to type something like this: ==== greektest.tex ===== \usetypescriptfile[cbgreek] \usetypescript [all] [cbgreek] \def\enablegreek{\language[greek]\catcode`~=\other\catcode`|=\other} \def\startgreek{\par\begingroup\setupbodyfont[cbgreek]\enablegreek} \let\stopgreek\endgroup \def\greek{\groupedcommand{\switchtobodyfont[cbgreek]\enablegreek}{}} \mainlanguage[english] \starttext We can easily use plain English for normal text, and then switch to greek when we want; as a first try we type the lower and upper case 26 letters of the latin alphabet and see how they come out in greek: \startgreek a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \stopgreek As it can be observed, some uppercase letters have strange outcomes; also, j gives \greek{j} and c gives the end-of-word sigma \greek{c}; interestingly, s gives either the normal sigma or the end-of-word one, depending on whether it's at the of the word or not: \greek{satrapws}. Of course we can use the various diacritical signs: accents (\greek{`a, 'a, ~a}), breathings (\greek{w, a"}) and subscribed iotas (\greek{a|, h|, w|}) (these last are pretty ugly in my opinion); observe how they automatically get the correct position with uppercase letters: (\greek{`A, 'A, ~A, A, A|}). Can the thing be used for serious work? \startgreek pl'agqjh, >epe`i Tro'ihs 'eperse;\hfill\break poll~wn d" >anjr'wpwn >'iden >'astea ka`i n'oon >'egnw,\hfill\break poll`a d" <'o g" >en p'ontw| p'ajen >'algea <`on kat`a jum'on,\hfill\break

arn'umenos <'hn te yuq`hn ka`i n'oston

\stoptext =======