From hancock@dircon.co.uk Sun Sep 24 08:36:15 2000
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From: "Ralph Hancock" <hancock@dircon.co.uk>
To: <classics@u.washington.edu>
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Subject: Re: Betaread (was A Proposal (SGreek))
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 16:34:50 +0100
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To reply to some of the points raised by Dr Kobes:

I don't think BetaCode is an ideal system. The use of capital letters is a
hindrance, and the lack of a terminal sigma is a worse one. But it's an
almost universal standard, and we really have to stick with it.

Incidentally, Antioch users can convert BetaCode to Unicode, though it is
not one of the listed options. Use the SGreek converter, then select the
text and hit Shift-F3 to turn it into lower case. This will leave you with
the asterisk + lower case indication of capitals, and no terminal sigmas,
but you can do something about this by hand. (And I might speak to my
programming colleague Denis about adding a converter that will do this
automatically.) You should change the lower case letters to capitals where
appropriate before running the routine to combine the diacritics.

> And one comment to the Unicode font Palatino Linotype: We
> have heard about the false capital RHO (with spiritus lenis
> instead of s. asper). One horrible more: Try an underdot and
> you see the underdot beside and below the letter.

I thought that the underdot was supposed to be positioned by Windows 2000's
Uniscribe system. Just tested the font in Windows 2000. It's exactly as he
says.

Any list member who is a bona fide user of Windows 2000 can have my
corrected version. It has:
capital Rho asper given a kosher asper
Unicode 2/3 coding for digamma, koppa, sampi and stigma (the original had
Unicode 1)
all zero width diacritics (I could find only 5, a scanty selection) made to
appear above/under the previous character

A zero width underdot can never work perfectly. It tends to get tangled up
in the descenders of some letters. If you put it below descender level, it
disappears from the screen. So the position of the underdot is a compromise
that makes it just possible to see that there is a dot under gamma and
rho -- that's the best I can do.

Ralph Hancock
hancock@dircon.co.uk
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~hancock/betaread.htm


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