A Tool for Writing Polytonic Greek

[Quasus]

For Windows

I’d like to present you this little tool for beta code to polytonic Greek conversion.

It works as follows: select a block of beta code text in your editor, press Ctrl + Shift + g and the text will be transformed into polytonic. You can try it e. g. with texts from Perseus.

Features: 1) smart final sigma, so that you can do without j, or you can do without s, or you can interchange j and s the way you like; 2) case insensitive.

For those who are acquainted with AutoHotkey just one word: AutoHotkey_L.

For those who are not: download bgreekexe.zip, unzip it and run the exe with a double click. Nothing special will happen except that a green square with the letter H will appear near the clock—it is the script’s icon. You can right-click it and choose Exit when you’ve had enough of it.

Any feedback is welcome.

 

[Godmy]

Pretty impressive! (I've just tried it myself)

As I said in the other thread: I'm personally trying to work with Greek in the last days purely with the unicode/polytonic script... but sometimes writing with a polytonic Greek keyboard layout (even after I've accustomed it to my needs) can be such a pain in eo loco aterrimo mei corporis, that this might yet come in handy! (And I might change my approach.)

Anyway nice job! I presume autohotkey provides you with some inner scripting language and also allows you to make little applications containing an invididual script for those, who don't run the application, that's quite neat . Anyway, really well done .

 

[Quasus]

Godmy, thanks for your feedback! ​ And such a positive one at that. ​ I’m very pleased.

Yes, you are absolutely right. ​ Typically one installs AutoHotkey, creates
scripts (text files with the .ahk extension), and runs them, but it is
possible to make standalone executives as well. ​ AutoHotkey aims at
non-programmers, and in many cases actual programming is not needed: you just
define autoreplace strings and hotkeys. ​ But it does offer a powerful
scripting language.

When I took a look at the standard polytonic layout, I was amazed at how
inconvenient it had to be. ​ It is utter idiocy to place the circumflex on ~. ​ A
layout should aim at convenience in the first place, not at mnemonics.

Once I made an AHK pseudolayout for polytonic Greek. ​ I’d say it was more
handy that the Microsoft one. ​ But for some reason I typed very slowly, even
though I had designed the layout on the basis of Russian one.

Actually I could revise that old script. ​ If you are interested, we could
design a layout and implement it. ​ An advantage of AHK pseudolayouts is that
you don’t need to install an actual layout, so no need to bother about
Ctrl+Shift and suchlike. ​ As for me, I hate having three or more layouts at a
time.

 

[Manus Correctrix]

Bah. I’d have to condescend to use Windows first.

 

[Godmy]

Hehehe... I've condescended already (and I feel well being again usually just inter $Fenestras )

Indeed very interesting this idea of pseudo-keyboard layouts... even more so when a non-IPA transcription for the target language is so firmly established as the betacode for polytonic ancient Greek.

Hmm... I've moved a lot of crucial keys in my polytonic keyboard to some different places and even made possible that I can type some vowels with certain diacritics just by hitting one key (in the alfa-num part, because that's the way we use it in typing in the standard Czech layout). But stil: when there are like three diacritics in one word or better for one single vowel (typically the first syllable: macron + accent + aspiration), it makes the writing awfully slow and unenjoyable... so you are right.

I've kind of already accepted that I have here a Greek layout to which I switch by hitting alf+shift+alfaNum2 but it's true that more languages we do in one time, more chaotic this situation about layouts can become, unless you use some clever solution (like this one ).

 

[Quasus]

I don’t want to even think how I can do without Windows. Because of the
AutoHotkey. ​ It has given me a great control over the system.

In Russia we typically have two layouts installed: the English one and the
Russian one. ​ Normally they are cyclically switched with Ctrl + Shift or Alt +
Shift. ​ Three or more layouts at a time make this cycling very inefficient.

However, one can switch layouts with AHK. ​ E. g. my left Ctrl turns English
on, and right Ctrl turns Russian on. ​ I can tell how to make such tricks.

Godmy, you use MSKLC or something like that?

In short, I think this way or another we can do nearly everything. ​ All we
need is design.

 

[Godmy]

UPDATE (currently for 64bit Windows)
(typically download the .exe file, if you don't have and use the right version of autohotkey)

With the help of the script Quasus wrote and shared, I've added into the program some stuff which was missing by an accident and mainly the macrons (ῡ, ῑ, ᾱ).
-----------------------------
How do we write macrons?

Lower case:
a&
i&
u&

Upper case (capital letters):
*&a
*&i
*&u

And newly (if you use a right font such as Cambria or in a restricted way also Arial (though Cambria is better), you can also make a letter with a macron and a breathing mark or an accent (as they do in the textbooks such as Athenaze):

Lower case:
a/&, a)&, a\&
i/&, i)&, i\&
u/&, u)&, i\&

Upper case:
*/&a, *)&a, *\&a
*/&i, *)&i, *\&i
*/&u, *)&u, *\&u

(A demonstration)

For more, see the directions for the Greek beta code: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Code
-------------------------

My personal references: Writing in a good polytonic Greek has never been easier and more comfortable than with this. I damn the polytonic layout... it's not exactly very nice to write with it a letter having 3 distinct diacritics in one and using shift, ctrl or shift+ctrl... and I don't know what to achieve that.
Use this

P.S.: Do you think, Cinefactus, this thread might get sticky? After all: The Ancient Greek is/should be the most important "Other language" in a Latin forum.
---------------------

The first file is EXE you can easily run. The second file is a file you can use if you have installed Autohotkey-L.

 

[Quasus]

I migrated to Ubuntu a while ago.   It's absolutely cool, but
unfortunately there's nothing similar to AutoHotkey.   I've decided to
try and implement a functionality similar to the bgreek AHK script for
Linux.

So we want 1) to press a hotkey; 2) to have selected text processed;
3) and pasted instead of the selection.

Following the Unix Way, we've got bricks and we build a castle we
like.   We'll use the following bricks: a) sed as the text processing
tool; b) xsel in order to work with the clipboard; c) xdotool so as to
emulate keystrokes for pasting; d) xbindkeys so as to create a hotkey.
Of course, this is not the only way; e. g. xclip's functionality is
quite similar to that of xsel.

The programmes xsel, xbindkeys, and xdotool are not installed by
default.   In Ubuntu they can be installed from repository in the usual
way:
sudo apt-get install xsel
sudo apt-get install xbindkeys
sudo apt-get install xdotool
They all are very small.

a) The sed script is quite straightforward: search'n'replace-all
nearly 500 times.   I'm attaching it.

b) The good thing about copying is that the text is already copied
into the X selection buffer as soon as we select it.   Running xsel
retrieves the contents of this selection.   This output is to be fed to
the sed script.   Then we want to write the script's output into the
clipboard (in order to paste it using Shift+Insert).   This can be done
by means of the same programme xsel supplied with options -i (write
stdin to the buffer) and -b (work with the clipboard).   So our
processing looks like this:
xsel | /path/to/bgreek.sed | xsel -bi

c) Now that the text is in the clipboard, we want to emulate
Shift+Insert:
xdotool key shift+Insert
Experiment shows that this should be done after a tiny pause.
Obviously this depends on how quick you release the keys.   I've set a
pause for 0.3 seconds; you can experiment.

d) Now we want to assign these actions to a hotkey (say,
Ctrl+Shift+g).   Append to your ~/.xbindkeysrc the following lines:
"xsel | bgreek.sed | xsel -bi; sleep 0.3; xdotool key shift+Insert"
    control + shift + g
Now run xbindkeys and try the hotkey.   Hope it works.

xbindkeys will be running in the background.   If you want to restart
it, just
killall xbindkeys
and launch it once again.

 

[Nikolaos]

Following the Unix Way, we've got bricks and we build a castle we like.

I like that description. It's like MinecraftOS or something.