As an addendum to my last post I discussed methods for typing in Ancient Greek. I had been using Tavultesoft Keyman from my undergraduate days when others struggled to cite Greek in their papers, resorting to entering diacritics by hand. It was a long-standing habit, and I have to admit that despite the advances made by advocates for computing in the Classics, I hadn’t given any mind to the native capabilities of modern computing environments. Nathaniel commented on using the native Polytonic Greek keyboard, and it seems that it will do the trick for most users.
GreekKeys (mentioned in the last post) is still superior for scholars because it allows you to use characters that are not part of the encoding for this keyboard (e.g., digamma), and because it gives a nice Polytonic Greek font sponsored by the APA. This keyboard does allow you to type stigma, koppa, and sampi, which are primarily used for Greek numerals. (My mnemonic and chart on the Greek numerals really should get a few more hits!)
For this simple solution, however, (and assuming you’re using Windows) you’ll need to access the Text Services and Input Languages dialog box. If you already use multiple keyboards and know what the Language Bar is, then this won’t be a problem. Otherwise, you can get to it by clicking the following:
- Control Panel
- Regional and Language Options
- Languages (tab)
- Details (button)
- Add (button)
- (Input Language) Greek
- (Keyboard Layout/IME) Greek Polytonic.
If you play around with it you should fairly quickly figure out how to use the keys. Here’s a quick and dirty list of the keystrokes to note:
- semicolon (;) or q + vowel = acute accent
- left square bracket ([) + vowel = circumflex accent
- right square bracket (]) + vowel = grave accent
- single quote (‘) + vowel = smooth breathing
- double quote (“) + vowel = rough breathing
- backslash (/) + vowel = acute accent with smooth breathing
- question mark (?, shift+backslash) + vowel = acute accent with rough breathing
- forward slash (\) + vowel = grave accent with smooth breathing
- pipe (|, shift+forward slash) + vowel = grave accent with rough breathing
- equal sign (=) + vowel = circumflex with smooth breathing
- plus sign (+) + vowel = circumflex with rough breathing
- hyphen (-) + vowel = macron
- underscore (_) + vowel = breve
- left curly bracket ({) + vowel = iota subscript (only with alpha, eta, and omega)
- colon (:) + vowel = diaresis (only with iota and upsilon)
- grave (`, to the left of the 1) + vowel = diaresis with acute accent (iota and upsilon only)
- tilde (~) + vowel = diaresis with grave accent (iota and upsilon only)
- AltGr (the right alt key) + 1 = stigma
- AltGr + 2 = koppa
- AltGr + 3 = sampi
- AltGr + grave + vowel = diaresis + circumflex (iota and upsilon only)
GreekKeys actually installs an alternative keyboard that functions in the same way. I’m not currently using GreekKeys on my work computer (the tech department doesn’t trust us to install anything, and I haven’t found the time to take the laptop in), but, again, I think it’s cleaner than the native keyboard (and I believe it includes support for more characters), and you do receive a nice font for your money, which in turn supports the APA.