FMP7 & Unicode polytonic Greek

[RDecker]

For any interested in the new Unicode capabilities of v.7, here's a report of my initial (successful) experiments with polytonic Greek. For context, I'm a prof who teaches ancient Greek (tech. koine) which is polytonic, rather than modern, monotonic Greek. I've used a database of Greek vocabulary words for many years in FMP3 (it started life in v. 2) using a legacy encoded font (actually 2 different ones over the years, most recently my own Galilee font).

To move this data to Unicode encoding in FMP7 I first exported it from FMP3 as an ASCII text file, imported it into Word, formatted it as a giant table, changed the font of the GreekWord col. to the Galilee font. I then ran a Textkit encoding converter program I created to change the Galilee text to Unicode, processed the file, then saved it as a UTF-8 text file, and finally imported it into FMP7 (trial version; I'm awaiting delivery of FMP7Dev any day now).

The net result is very satisfactory. No import problems of any sort. Using an appropriate font (in this case Gentium) it displays just fine.

I then tried sorting on the field containing the Greek word (now in Unicode format). In the Sort dialog, there is an option to over-ride a specific field's language for sorting purposes. I selected Greek from the popup menu--and it sorted perfectly (so far as I've checked--but there are a lot of words to check and I've not read all of them yet).

I then moved the same database to Mac OS X 10.3.3 and it all seems to work identically there also.

I initially specified Unicode for sorting purposes, but that doesn't sort alphabetically. Instead it sorts by Unicode code point--and although "plain" characters are assigned alphabetically in Unicode, those with diacritics are not. (Unicode polytonic Greek uses precomposed characters.) Yet FM handles it all correctly.

I've also made a brief trial of Tavultesoft's Keyman for imputting Unicode Greek text and it seems to work fine in FM, though I've not done a lot with this yet. (I haven't tried Unicode imput in Mac OSX yet since that a more difficult proposition for polytonic Greek at this point.)

(I've noticed a few screeen glitches, but I'll post that in another topic.)

Decker

FileMaker Version: 7

Platform: Windows XP & Mac OS X 10.3.3

[thg]

An OS X Polytonic Greek input keyboard is available at

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pinax/greekkeys/GKUnicode.html

and seems to work OK.

[RDecker]

This is an old thread now, but for any others who might search on this topic, I'd note another option for entering polytonic Greek on Mac OS X, 10.2+. I just posted a new keyboard layout file at the URL below. It does the same thing as the one at berkeley.edu referenced above, but if follows the TLG beta code scheme instead. That makes it a lot easier for those who move, e.g., back and forth from Windows (esp. if using Keyman witht eh Classical Greek keyboard) and Mac. Details, etc. at:

http://faculty.bbc.edu.rdecker/font/mackeyboard.htm