I used to be good at Greek. Now, I hardly ever touch it, and it is fading from my memory. I will need my previous skill level and far beyond, someday. But for now, I just need to be able to get by.
Typing on the computer in Greek, hopefully, will not be needed for my big idea on the web. However, a smidgen of hunting and pecking may yet be in store for me, and so I want what little I do have to do to be as painless as possible. Mac’s are great at facilitating multi-lingual structures, but Ancient Greek presents a unique challenge. I found two possibilities for a solution.
The smart man who made the journal software that I now use, also made a program called UniGreek Mac. In it, one can switch back and forth from seen what one types in greek and it english with brackets, pluses and slashes. One can then cut and paste into other application Unicode text from the Greek side of the app. I found this very useful initially. It’ll still be useful if I find large quantity of Greek in the funky, English or amalgam style and need to paste them into Unicode, without retyping them. However, I found a more elegant solution for small jobs.
SophoKeys, beside being cleverly named, is a mitzvah and a half. After one has installed it, there appears in the menu bar a choice of switching to Greek typing mode. Once selected, Greek consonants appears and vowel hesitantly reveal themselves only once accents and breathing marks are selected. It’s so easy!
I suppose I must admit that both methods are ultimately good, but I was quite overwhelmed just now to discover SophoKeys. Typing straight into Greek has never been this easy. Both of these advances, however, will really help with my forthcoming Bible website.
application greek linguistics unicode
