Polytonic Greek Mac OS X

Introduction
Mac OS X is Unicode-savvy. Therefore different languages and scripts can be realised in OpenType fonts. Because of the unique identification of characters in OpenType fonts, documents can be exchanged cross-platform (Macintosh, Windows, Linux, etc.) without losing textinformation. When using the same font (eg. Palatino™ Linotype) on different platforms, textformatting will be obtained.

This explanation will cover, which settings have to be made in the ’System Preferences’ of Mac OS X to make use of polytonic Greek (ancient Greek).

Mac OS 10.4.x (Tiger)
Because Unicode natively supported in Mac OS X 10.4, there is no need to install additional software. All you have to do is to activate a few settings in the ’System Preferences’. Open up ’System Preferences’ and choose ’International’:



In the new window, choose ’Input Menu’ and activate ’Greek Polytonic’. You can also choose ’Greek’ (monotonic), if you would like to write in modern Greek.
Two useful tools for text setting in Greek are ’Keyboard Viewer’ and ’Character Palette’. You can find these entries at the beginning of the list.



If all options are activated close the ’International’ window. In the upper right corner of the top menu all currently activated keyboard drivers will appear. Click on the ’flag’ and a menu will appear with all languages. Choose ’Greek Polytonic’ from the menu.



You have successfully activated the Greek Polytonic keyboard driver!


Creating text in Greek Polytonic
If the keyboard driver has been activated correctly you can now start to create text in ancient Greek. Please note that you need to have a Unicode-savvy application to type correctly. Mac OS X offers ’TextEdit’ which is Unicode-savvy. You can find it in the ’Applications’-Folder.



Open up ’TextEdit’ and choose the ’Greek Polytonic’ keyboard driver.

Type a few characters on your keyboard. To have a closer look at the characters, at first choose a larger font size.



The written Greek language is a little complex at first if you are used to type in Latin languages and the polytonic characters are not marked on the keyboard. Therefore it is a little bit confusing to remember all character positions on the keyboard. When using Mac OS X there is help: The ’Keyboard Viewer’.



The ’Keyboard Viewer’ simulates the currently active keyboard virtually. If you change the keyboard driver (or the physical keyboard on your Macintosh) , then also the virtual keyboard will change. Using the ’Keyboard Viewer’ you can now easily locate and choose the needed character. You can set the size of the keyboard as you wish.

Characters marked in orange are special accents, which are set using in combination with another character. Type the accent first and then the character which shall be used with the accent. You can insert the characters by clicking on the ’Keyboard Viewer’.


Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) and Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar)
Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.2 delivered with monotonic Greek (modern Greek) only. Therefore the polytonic Greek keyboard driver must be downloaded and installed first. The keyboard driver can be downloaded here.

If you would like to make the keyboard driver available to all user on your Macintosh, please follow the instructions below:

1. To install this file you need to have Administrator privileges.
2. Download the keyboard driver using the link above.
3. Unpack the downloaded file.
4. On the hard drive open up the folder using this path: MacHD/Library/Keyboard Layouts.
5. Please confirm bei logging in using the Administrator name and password.
6. After installation, please log off and then log on again to activate the changes.

Open ’System Preferences’ and choose ’International’. Select the ’Greek Polytonic’ keyboard driver.

You can also use the ’Keyboard Viewer’ (like using Mac OS 10.4) to locate the characters.


Polytonic Greek Fonts
Many of the fonts that come with Mac OS 10.4 include polytonic Greek characters. Many of them are also available on Mac OS 10.2 and 10.3, but the exact amount of fonts this dependent on the system configuration.

The following fonts on Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) include polytonic characters:
Arial
Helvetica
Lucida Grande
Times.