Linux: Greece Polytonic Keyboard (Gnome)

[Jonathan Robie]

Here's a guide to entering Polytonic Greek using the Greece Polytonic Keyboard, which is the keyboard used for Gnome on Linux systems. In the examples the left hand shows the captions that appear on the keys for an American keyboard, and the right hand shows the resulting Greek character.

Anyone want to prepare a similar guide for Windows or Mac or other systems, in a different thread, with an appropriate title?

Accents

; acute accent (ὀξεῖα)
' grave accent (βαρεῖα)
[ circumflex (περισπωμένη)

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;a ά
'a ὰ
[a ᾶ

Breathing

: smooth breathing (ψιλὸν πνεῦμα)
" rough breathing (δασὺ πνεῦμα)

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:a ἀ
"a ἁ

Iota Subscript

] iota subscript (ὑπογεγραμμένη)

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]a ᾳ

Diaresis

{ diaresis (διαλυτικά)

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{i  ϊ

Combining: Accent before breathing

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[:a ἆ
]:a ᾀ
][:a ᾆ
]"a ᾀ
["a ἆ
;:a ἄ
'"a ἃ
':a ἅ
":a ἂ

[Jonathan Robie]

Here's the keyboard that matches the above description.

linux-gnome-greek.png (47.15 KiB) Viewed 29522 times

[NathanSmith]

Fantastic! Just last night I was thinking that I needed to search for good instructions for typing polytonic Greek in Gnome, and here I've stumbled upon some. Thanks.

[RDecker]

Anyone want to prepare a similar guide for Windows or Mac or other systems, in a different thread, with an appropriate title?

I didn't notice this when it was posted. Nathan's comments today brought it to the surface. I've long had guides to the use of Unicode for Windows and Mac posted as well as a detailed guide to Unicode for biblical studies and tutorials for installing and using the pieces. There are multiple pages, but they should be linked from my main Unicode page: http://ntresources.com/unicode.htm. The tutorials are at http://ntresources.com/font/UnicodeTutorials.htm.

[njw]

Thanks so much for this; it's exactly what I was looking for. It's hard to find information about this sort of stuff when you're new to the area.

A quick note: if you want to set the keyboard to polytonic greek without using a window manager, this is the command:

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setxkbmap -layout gr -variant polytonic

[Jonathan Robie]

A quick note: if you want to set the keyboard to polytonic greek without using a window manager, this is the command:

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setxkbmap -layout gr -variant polytonic

You can also use setxkbmap to set the key that toggles:

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setxkbmap -option "grp:alt_shift_toggle"

For some reason, toggling isn't working correctly in the latest update of Cinnamon, while I wait for them to fix that, this comes in very handy. If you choose to specify languages, be sure to specify both English and Greek, or you can't toggle back ...

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setxkbmap 'us,gr' -variant ',polytonic' -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle'

The available layouts and variants are found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. Every layout has its file and by listing such file you can find the variants of the layout. Try:

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$ cat /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/gr

[Jonathan Robie]

For other ways to skin this cat, see:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke ... on_in_Xorg

[Stephen Hughes]

Is Gnome on Ubuntu the same Gnome as on Fedora?

Are they different versions like Windows XP vs. Windows 7?
Is there an advantage in using one over the other for Greek?

[Jonathan Robie]

Is Gnome on Ubuntu the same Gnome as on Fedora?

For Windows or Macintosh, the operating system you install has one user interface, the desktop environment. On Linux you have a choice of desktop environments: Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE, Mate, Xfce are particularly popular. We like choice.

Are they different versions like Windows XP vs. Windows 7?

There are different versions of some of these environments that are analogous. And of course different versions of the underlying operating systems.

Is there an advantage in using one over the other for Greek?

I've been happy with either Gnome or Cinnamon, I imagine KDE would also work well for Greek but I have less experience with it. I never got my Greek environment set up well for Mate or Xfce.

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

I use mostly KDE on Kubuntu, so I'm not completely familiar with Gnome. But I know that "vanilla" Ubuntu user interface / desktop environment is called Unity and is based on Gnome but is not the same as Gnome. There's pure Gnome flavor available, see http://ubuntugnome.org/documentation/faq/. Also the KDE environment is somewhat modified from the original KDE. You can mix different desktop environments on ubuntu -- Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc. are really just software packages and configuration on top of ubuntu base. You can e.g. install Ubuntu and afterwards install kubuntu-desktop package on it, and it becomes Kubuntu.

But Fedora and some other distributions are different. You can't mix ubuntu-based distros and Fedora. They have different infrastructure and packaging systems. Fedora has its own flavors of Gnome and KDE. I'm not nowadays familiar with Fedora, so I can't say how much its Gnome and KDE differ from vanilla Gnome and KDE.

Using polytonic Greek on Kubuntu is easy. In System Setting -> Hardware -> Keyboard -> Layouts add a layout. Select "Show layout indicator". The indicator is in the Panel (the KDE bar). Click it to change the layout, or use configurable shortcuts. I don't remember anymore but I believe the Greek layout is the same as in Gnome or plain X.