Keyboards

Table of Contents

• The Typewriter Keyboard
• Keyboards for Windows 2000/XP/Vista
  • Experimental Keyboard KeymanGreek “Greek for all”
  • Microsoft's Native Polytonic Greek Keyboard
• Keyboards for MacOS X
• Keyboards for Linux

To read Greek in a given encoding it is only necessary to have the appropriate font. But to write it, one must also have a virtual keyboard layout, that is: a program which maps the physical keys of the keyboard to the appropriate Greek characters. In that way, by temporarily forgetting what is written on the keys of our keyboard we can imagine they correspond to other signs, and use them to keyboard text in any writing system and language.

The Typewriter Keyboard

Here is the keyboard of a manual typewriter (without grave accents) which has survived the monotonic holocaust:

Accents, breathings and subscript iota are "dead" keys in the sense that the cylinder will not advance but will remain until the letter carrying the sign is stroken. Latin letters are provided so that the complete 26-letter Latin alphabet is available, but only in uppercase form. Digits 0 and 1 are missing, one used to use letters O and I instead. The upper dot is also missing, one had to type a period with the cylinder slightly lifted. Similarly, to underline a sentence one would lower the cylinder and type dashes.

Keyboards for Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Experimental Keyboard KeymanGreek “Greek for all”

Tavultesoft company has given us the opportunity to create a new Greek keyboard based on their Keyman software. This keyboard will be distributed for no charge. To use it please visit the following page:

http://www.keymangreek.gr

Microsoft's Native Polytonic Greek Keyboard

Installation

The "Greek (polytonic)" keyboard is available on all Windows 2000 and XP. To use it, you must first install it and then choose it in the small list of language flags in the right part of the bottom bar.

For detailed instructions on how to install the keyboard see here (Windows XP) or here (Windows 2000).

Γραφικὴ παράσταση

Σὲ κόκκινο φόντο: τὰ νεκρὰ πλῆκτρα. Σὲ παρένθεση: τί ἀποκτᾶμε χτυπῶντας τὸ πλῆκτρο καὶ μετὰ κενό. Περνῶντας πάνω ἀπὸ ἕνα σύμβολο ἐμφανίζεται ὁ ὁρισμός του (Safari, Firefox).

1. Κανονικὴ διάταξη

2. Κεφαλαῖα

3. AltGr

4. AltGr + κεφαλαῖα

Σχόλια

The big problem of this keyboard layout is that Microsoft does not accept multiple dead keys. When we wish a breathing, an accent and a subscript iota combined, we cannot simply press the key of the breathing followed by the one of the accent followed by the one of the subscript iota. These three signs have to be obtained by a single key, and for that reason we need to memorize many keys, as many as the total amount of combinations of diacritics.

Keyboards for MacOS X

Keyboard layout for MacOS X v10.4 and beyond

As usual, Apple is going farther than Microsoft by allowing multiple dead keys. This make keyboarding of Greek extremely easy since you need only a single key for every accent, breathing, and for the subscript iota.

Installation

The keyboard "Greek (polytonic)" is available in MacOS X version 10.4 and beyond. To use it you must first check it in the list of keyboards of the "International" tool. Then you must select it in the list of keyboard/language flags on the upper right corner of the screen.

For detailed instructions on its installation, see here.

Plain layout

Layout with Shift key pressed

Logic: the smooth breathings of the plain layout become rough ones, the final sigma becomes diaeresis with acute and instead of a circumflex accent we find a subscript iota.

Keyboards for Linux

Forthcoming.