Dear list, just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki: https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues: 1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982. ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for modern polytonic Greek (http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex...). Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography. 2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as \currentdate). In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them. Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features. Just in case it might help, Pablo
Hi Pablo, thanks for this; it is very informative and clear. Just one short remark and one correction: 1. "Before 1982, Greek ort[h]ography was polytonic." That's a bit of an oversimplification. I'm no expert here, but I think many Greek print publications had already given up on using circumflex and grave accent or at least greatly simplified their use; the law of 1982 simple codified what had been developing for some time. Your sentence makes it sound like a sudden and random decision. 2. I think it would be worth pointing out that unfortunately, Greek lowercase letters with acute accent occur separately in two unicode blocks: the combinations in U+03AC-U+03AF and U+03CC-U+03CF ("Greek small letter X with tonos") are functionally identical to the combinations in the U+1F7 block ("Greek small letter X with acute accent"). This is a source of confusion both in fonts and in programming, because some programs normalize these letters, so for string operations and searches, you may obtain surprising results. Thank you for the article! Thomas On 1/21/23 13:16, Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context wrote:
Dear list,
just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki:
https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek
Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues:
1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982.
ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for modern polytonic Greek (http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex...).
Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography.
2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as \currentdate).
In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them.
Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features.
Just in case it might help,
Pablo ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
On 1/21/23 14:13, Thomas A. Schmitz via ntg-context wrote:
Hi Pablo,
thanks for this; it is very informative and clear. Just one short remark and one correction:
Many thanks for your review and your correction, Thomas.
1. "Before 1982, Greek ort[h]ography was polytonic." That's a bit of an oversimplification.
Many thanks for noticing the typo in “orthography”. The sentence you quote, it is an oversimplification (altough “from 1500” is also “before 1982” 😅). I’m afraid I didn’t find the right way to describe the difference between polytonic and monotonic systems. I wanted to break the common misconception “if contemporary Greek is monotonic, polytonic orthography is ancient Greek”. Either I’m totally missing the whole question, or it is plainly wrong that polytonic means ancient Greek (although ancient Greek is polytonic).
[...] 2. I think it would be worth pointing out that unfortunately, Greek lowercase letters with acute accent occur separately in two unicode blocks: the combinations in U+03AC-U+03AF and U+03CC-U+03CF ("Greek small letter X with tonos") are functionally identical to the combinations in the U+1F7 block ("Greek small letter X with acute accent").
Many thanks for pointing this out. I explicitly avoided, since it seems to me a tricky question. https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek#Monotonic_and_Acute_Accent is a way of putting it.
This is a source of confusion both in fonts and in programming, because some programs normalize these letters, so for string operations and searches, you may obtain surprising results.
“Charachter normalization” is tricky (for me, mainly with the Latin alphabet). https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek#On_“Character_Normalization” tries to explain this.
Thank you for the article!
Many thanks for your review, Pablo
Thank you very much about this accurate "mise au point", Pablo ! Le 21/01/2023 à 13:16, Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context a écrit :
Dear list,
just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki:
https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek
Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues:
1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982.
ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for modern polytonic Greek (http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex...).
Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography.
2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as \currentdate).
In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them.
Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features.
Just in case it might help,
Pablo ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : https://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
-- Jean-Pierre Delange Ancients&Moderns Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie (HC)
participants (3)
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Jean-Pierre Delange -
Pablo Rodriguez -
Thomas A. Schmitz