newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Thomas A. Schmitz]

After using LateX for a while, I became interested in ConTeXt and was 
immediately fascinated by the ease of use and the logical structure of 
commands. However, for my job, I need to typeset in ancient Greek 
(politoniko). There are a couple of packages for LaTeX that can do that 
(Teubner, psgreek e.g.), but can it be done in ConTeXt? I already 
stumble whenever I try to set the language to Greek; I get a couple of 
error messages (I use the standard teTex-distribution on a Mac with OS 
X 10.2). Can anybody point me to helpful documents or discussions? 
Thanks a lot!
--
Thomas A. Schmitz
Philologisches Seminar
Universitaet Bonn
Am Hof 1 e
53113 Bonn
Germany

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Monday, May 12, 2003 Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

TAS> After using LateX for a while, I became interested in
TAS> ConTeXt and was immediately fascinated by the ease of use
TAS> and the logical structure of commands. However, for my
TAS> job, I need to typeset in ancient Greek (politoniko).
TAS> There are a couple of packages for LaTeX that can do that
TAS> (Teubner, psgreek e.g.), but can it be done in ConTeXt? I
TAS> already stumble whenever I try to set the language to
TAS> Greek; I get a couple of error messages (I use the
TAS> standard teTex-distribution on a Mac with OS X 10.2). Can
TAS> anybody point me to helpful documents or discussions?
TAS> Thanks a lot!

What kind of errors do you get?

Some time ago I did give the thing a quick try, and could do
something by using Gamma (ConTeXt compiled with an Omega
engine), and could do something; but since the greek-relevant
OCPs in Omega are defective, I dropped the thing.

Something that could probably be done is setting up a
typescript to use, for example, Claudio Beccari's fonts
(cbgreek). Also, there may be some Greek ConTeXt user (maybe
the one who contributed the Greek-specific language things?).
He might know more.

(Sorry for the quick answer, I will try to come out with a
draft for the cbgreek typescripts later :>)

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Idris S Hamid]

Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

> Some time ago I did give the thing a quick try, and could do
> something by using Gamma (ConTeXt compiled with an Omega
> engine), and could do something; but since the greek-relevant
> OCPs in Omega are defective, I dropped the thing.

I'd be curious to know what was wrong with those otp's (not that I
hardly ever use greek).

Best
Idris

Re[2]: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Thursday, May 15, 2003 Idris S Hamid wrote:

ISH> Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

>> Some time ago I did give the thing a quick try, and could do
>> something by using Gamma (ConTeXt compiled with an Omega
>> engine), and could do something; but since the greek-relevant
>> OCPs in Omega are defective, I dropped the thing.

ISH> I'd be curious to know what was wrong with those otp's (not that I
ISH> hardly ever use greek).

Off the top of my head: some obvious combinations were
missing/didn't seem to work (example: =A, <r, A| etc), other
were plain wrong (again, with capital alpha, some spirit/accent
combinations failed).

BTW, Idris, I locally made a few changes to m-gamma, partly to
make it more ConTeXtish, and partly to make it capable of using
the latest OTPs (those from the 1.2x series, which anyway don't
seem to fix the problem); you may want to have a look at it and
"officialize" the changes. Shall I send it to you?

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Idris S Hamid]

Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:

> BTW, Idris, I locally made a few changes to m-gamma, partly to
> make it more ConTeXtish, and partly to make it capable of using
> the latest OTPs (those from the 1.2x series, which anyway don't
> seem to fix the problem); you may want to have a look at it and
> "officialize" the changes. Shall I send it to you?

Sure, I'll be happy to look at it. But I'd also be happy to turn over
maintanence of m-gamma to you (and Hans), since u're much more of an expert
in these things and I'm still a rank amateur:-)

Off-topic: By the way, we need a torture file for eOmega. I'm still a
little worried that the TRIP-fix may have broken some of the Omega-specific
features, and a good torture file would help immensely in noticing these
things. I'll try to whip something up in addition to Omega's torture.tex
(which I could never get to work anyway...)

Best
Idris

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen]

At 13:09 17/05/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
>
> > BTW, Idris, I locally made a few changes to m-gamma, partly to
> > make it more ConTeXtish, and partly to make it capable of using
> > the latest OTPs (those from the 1.2x series, which anyway don't
> > seem to fix the problem); you may want to have a look at it and
> > "officialize" the changes. Shall I send it to you?
>
>Sure, I'll be happy to look at it. But I'd also be happy to turn over
>maintanence of m-gamma to you (and Hans), since u're much more of an expert
>in these things and I'm still a rank amateur:-)

as soon as you have m-gamma complete i'll move thinsg to the core of context

>Off-topic: By the way, we need a torture file for eOmega. I'm still a
>little worried that the TRIP-fix may have broken some of the Omega-specific

what tripping the problem? it may be an unimportant one

>features, and a good torture file would help immensely in noticing these
>things. I'll try to whip something up in addition to Omega's torture.tex
>(which I could never get to work anyway...)

forget about such tests, the real test for eomega is a 300 page document 
with average memory settings; the main thing is to make sure that the otp 
parser does not keep on reading whole files

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf
                     documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re[2]: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Saturday, May 17, 2003 Hans Hagen wrote:

HH> At 13:09 17/05/2003 -0600, Idris S Hamid wrote:
>>Giuseppe Bilotta wrote:
>>
>> > BTW, Idris, I locally made a few changes to m-gamma, partly to
>> > make it more ConTeXtish, and partly to make it capable of using
>> > the latest OTPs (those from the 1.2x series, which anyway don't
>> > seem to fix the problem); you may want to have a look at it and
>> > "officialize" the changes. Shall I send it to you?
>>
>>Sure, I'll be happy to look at it. But I'd also be happy to turn over
>>maintanence of m-gamma to you (and Hans), since u're much more of an expert
>>in these things and I'm still a rank amateur:-)

HH> as soon as you have m-gamma complete i'll move thinsg to the core of context

Two things: supporting gamma is for me somewhat a problem,
because I have *very* limited knowledge of the multilingual
stuff which is in it. The only fixes I implemented were some
"ConTeXtization" of a few things which had remained "LaTeXish"
or even TeXish in a couple of cases. Anyway, the current
m-gamma thing can only be a temporary solution: the whole thing
really needs to be redesigned from scratch with ConTeXt in
mind, and ConTeXt-specific OTPs should be designed.

>>Off-topic: By the way, we need a torture file for eOmega. I'm still a
>>little worried that the TRIP-fix may have broken some of the Omega-specific

HH> what tripping the problem? it may be an unimportant one

It was an extremely important one: it popped up in many
real-world cases (at least according to Alan). The fix should
not break anything, because it consisted in a removal of a
routine which was used but without side-effects (at least that
I could see). There other tripping problems (i.e. I *lied* when
I said e-Omega can now trip correctly), but these seem to be
major and will be addressed in the (hopefully near) future.

>>features, and a good torture file would help immensely in noticing these
>>things. I'll try to whip something up in addition to Omega's torture.tex
>>(which I could never get to work anyway...)

HH> forget about such tests, the real test for eomega is a 300 page document
HH> with average memory settings; the main thing is to make sure that the otp
HH> parser does not keep on reading whole files

Do you have some such a test file? If you provide a link, I can
try it here.

Anyway, we do need real torture tests, possibly as heinous as
TRIP and ETRIP (which BTW reminds me I should try to ETRIP
e-Omega ...).

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Re[2]: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen]

At 01:27 18/05/2003 +0200, you wrote:

>HH> forget about such tests, the real test for eomega is a 300 page document
>HH> with average memory settings; the main thing is to make sure that the otp
>HH> parser does not keep on reading whole files
>
>Do you have some such a test file? If you provide a link, I can
>try it here.

i'll see if i can do some tests when fabrice posts the binary

>Anyway, we do need real torture tests, possibly as heinous as
>TRIP and ETRIP (which BTW reminds me I should try to ETRIP
>e-Omega ...).

just wondering: do you use etex's >255 registers or just omega's native ones?

Hans


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf
                     documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re[3]: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

Sunday, May 18, 2003 Hans Hagen wrote:

HH> At 01:27 18/05/2003 +0200, you wrote:

>>HH> forget about such tests, the real test for eomega is a 300 page document
>>HH> with average memory settings; the main thing is to make sure that the otp
>>HH> parser does not keep on reading whole files
>>
>>Do you have some such a test file? If you provide a link, I can
>>try it here.

HH> i'll see if i can do some tests when fabrice posts the binary

>>Anyway, we do need real torture tests, possibly as heinous as
>>TRIP and ETRIP (which BTW reminds me I should try to ETRIP
>>e-Omega ...).

HH> just wondering: do you use etex's >255 registers or just omega's native ones?

I use Omega's native ones, mostly. The only exception is that
\marks registers (these follow the e-TeX implementation).

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

eOmega for Gamma [Was Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?]

[Idris S Hamid]

[Please cc Alan for this thread.]

Hans Hagen wrote:

> >features, and a good torture file would help immensely in noticing these
> >things. I'll try to whip something up in addition to Omega's torture.tex
> >(which I could never get to work anyway...)
>
> forget about such tests, the real test for eomega is a 300 page document
> with average memory settings; the main thing is to make sure that the otp
> parser does not keep on reading whole files

I have some pretty intense stuff here, but unfortunately the otp's and fonts are
proprietary so we can't use them for general testing. But I have some
all-vowelized Arabic stuff extending over a hundred pages that generally works
fine. Some of it uses EDMAC, which really helps to tax the memory etc. Fully
vowelized Arabic is the most taxing stuff; I guess I can  port some of my stuff
to the default Omega font (omarb) for testing, though the results will look
chaotic unless I write new otp's for that font (ugh). On the other hand, since u
and gb don't know Arabic :-( that will not matter at all.

I'll try to put something together in the next two weeks (grading, teaching
Summer session, going to DC for a speech r keeping me tied up 4 now).

Best
Idris

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Idris S Hamid]

One more thing:

if you could find a way to get rid of this input file in m-gamma (which is
just a port/improvement of omega.sty)

grlccode.tex

Hans will be quite happy. But since I don't know Greek I don't know what to
do with it.

Best
Idris

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Hans Hagen]

At 13:40 17/05/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>One more thing:
>
>if you could find a way to get rid of this input file in m-gamma (which is
>just a port/improvement of omega.sty)
>
>grlccode.tex
>
>Hans will be quite happy. But since I don't know Greek I don't know what to
>do with it.

non-omega greek will be available soon so that's a starting point

Hans

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
                       Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
  tel: +31 (0)38 477 53 69 | fax: +31 (0)38 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                        information: http://www.pragma-ade.com/roadmap.pdf
                     documentation: http://www.pragma-ade.com/showcase.pdf
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: newbie question: greek in ConTeXt?

[Giuseppe Bilotta]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1011 bytes --]

Monday, May 12, 2003 Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

TAS> After using LateX for a while, I became interested in
TAS> ConTeXt and was immediately fascinated by the ease of use
TAS> and the logical structure of commands. However, for my
TAS> job, I need to typeset in ancient Greek (politoniko).
TAS> There are a couple of packages for LaTeX that can do that
TAS> (Teubner, psgreek e.g.), but can it be done in ConTeXt? I
TAS> already stumble whenever I try to set the language to
TAS> Greek; I get a couple of error messages (I use the
TAS> standard teTex-distribution on a Mac with OS X 10.2). Can
TAS> anybody point me to helpful documents or discussions?

Ok, I did some quick&dirty job which you may want to test
there; it requires the cbgreek fonts, though (having never used
Teubner or psgreek, I have no idea how those work). Please see
the attacked cbgreek.tex (containing the typescript definition
for greek serif only, yet) and greektest.tex (containing an
example document).

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

[-- Attachment #2: cbgreek.tex --]
[-- Type: application/octet-stream, Size: 4169 bytes --]

\starttypescript [serif] [cb-greek] [name]

  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Normal]              [grmn]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Oblique]             [grmo]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Italic]              [grmi]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-UprightItalic]       [grmu]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Caps]                [grmc]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Leipzig]             [grml]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Medium-Roman]               [grmr]

  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Normal]                [grbn]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Oblique]               [grbo]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Italic]                [grbi]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-UprightItalic]         [grbu]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Caps]                  [grbc]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Leipzig]               [grbl]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-Bold-Roman]                 [grbr]

  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Normal]        [grxn]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Oblique]       [grxo]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Italic]        [grxi]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-UprightItalic] [grxu]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Caps]          [grxc]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Leipzig]       [grxl]
  \definefontsynonym [CBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Roman]         [grxr]

  \definefontsynonym [Serif]                 [GBGreek-Regular-Medium-Normal]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifSlanted]          [GBGreek-Regular-Medium-Oblique]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifItalic]           [GBGreek-Regular-Medium-Italic]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifCaps]             [GBGreek-Regular-Medium-Caps]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifBold]             [GBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Normal]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifBoldSlanted]      [GBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Oblique]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifBoldItalic]       [GBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Italic]
  \definefontsynonym [SerifBoldCaps]         [GBGreek-Regular-BoldExtended-Caps]
   
\stoptypescript
 

\starttypescript [serif] [cb-greek] [size]
% Please note that we use Bold Extended instead of Bold

  \definebodyfont
    [5pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn0500,
     sl=grmo0500,
     it=grmi0500,
     sc=grmc0500,
     bf=grxn0500,
     bs=grxo0500,
     bi=grxi0500]

  \definebodyfont
    [6pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn0600,
     sl=grmo0600,
     it=grmi0600,
     sc=grmc0600,
     bf=grxn0600,
     bs=grxo0600,
     bi=grxi0600]

  \definebodyfont
    [7pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn0700,
     sl=grmo0700,
     it=grmi0700,
     sc=grmc0700,
     bf=grxn0700,
     bs=grxo0700,
     bi=grxi0700]

  \definebodyfont
    [8pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn0800,
     sl=grmo0800,
     it=grmi0800,
     sc=grmc0800,
     bf=grxn0800,
     bs=grxo0800,
     bi=grxi0800]

  \definebodyfont
    [9pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn0900,
     sl=grmo0900,
     it=grmi0900,
     sc=grmc0900,
     bf=grxn0900,
     bs=grxo0900,
     bi=grxi0900]

  \definebodyfont
    [10pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn1000,
     sl=grmo1000,
     it=grmi1000,
     sc=grmc1000,
     bf=grxn1000,
     bs=grxo1000,
     bi=grxi1000]

  \definebodyfont
    [10.95pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn1095,
     sl=grmo1095,
     it=grmi1095,
     sc=grmc1095,
     bf=grxn1095,
     bs=grxo1095,
     bi=grxi1095]

  \definebodyfont
    [12pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn1200,
     sl=grmo1200,
     it=grmi1200,
     sc=grmc1200,
     bf=grxn1200,
     bs=grxo1200,
     bi=grxi1200]

  \definebodyfont
    [14.40pt]
    [rm]
    [tf=grmn1440,
     sl=grmo1440,
     it=grmi1440,
     sc=grmc1440,
     bf=grxn1440,
     bs=grxo1440,
     bi=grxi1440]

\stoptypescript

\starttypescript [CBGreek]

  \definebodyfontenvironment
    [cbgreek]
    [default]
    []

  \definetypeface [cbgreek] [rm] [serif] [cb-greek] [cb-greek]

\stoptypescript

[-- Attachment #3: greektest.tex --]
[-- Type: application/octet-stream, Size: 1715 bytes --]

\usetypescriptfile[cbgreek]

\usetypescript [all] [cbgreek]

\def\enablegreek{\language[greek]\catcode`~=\other\catcode`|=\other}
\def\startgreek{\par\begingroup\setupbodyfont[cbgreek]\enablegreek}
\let\stopgreek\endgroup

\def\greek{\groupedcommand{\switchtobodyfont[cbgreek]\enablegreek}{}}

\mainlanguage[english]

\starttext

We can easily use plain English for normal text, and then switch
to greek when we want; as a first try we type the lower and
upper case 26 letters of the latin alphabet and see how they come
out in greek:
\startgreek
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
\stopgreek

As it can be observed, some uppercase letters have strange
outcomes; also, j gives \greek{j} and c gives the
end-of-word sigma \greek{c}; interestingly, s gives either the
normal sigma or the end-of-word one, depending on whether it's at
the of the word or not: \greek{satrapws}.

Of course we can use the various diacritical signs: accents
(\greek{`a, 'a, ~a}), breathings (\greek{<r, >w, a"}) and
subscribed iotas (\greek{a|, h|, w|}) (these last are pretty ugly in my
opinion); observe how they automatically get the correct position
with uppercase letters: (\greek{`A, 'A, ~A, <A, >A, A|}).

Can the thing be used for serious work?

\startgreek
>'Andra moi >'ennepe, Mo~usa, pol'utropon, >'os m'ala poll`a\hfill\break
pl'agqjh, >epe`i Tro'ihs <er`on ptol'iejron >'eperse;\hfill\break
poll~wn d" >anjr'wpwn >'iden >'astea ka`i n'oon >'egnw,\hfill\break
poll`a d" <'o g" >en p'ontw| p'ajen >'algea <`on kat`a jum'on,\hfill\break
>arn'umenos <'hn te yuq`hn ka`i n'oston <eta'irwn.
\stopgreek

\stoptext