rewrite for Greek in the wiki

rewrite for Greek in the wiki

[Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context]

Dear list,

just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki:

  https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek

Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues:

1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern
polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982.

ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for
modern polytonic Greek
(http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex/hyph-el-polyton.tex).

Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset
both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography.

2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as
\currentdate).

In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them.

Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features.

Just in case it might help,

Pablo
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: rewrite for Greek in the wiki

[Thomas A. Schmitz via ntg-context]

Hi Pablo,

thanks for this; it is very informative and clear. Just one short remark 
and one correction:

1. "Before 1982, Greek ort[h]ography was polytonic." That's a bit of an 
oversimplification. I'm no expert here, but I think many Greek print 
publications had already given up on using circumflex and grave accent 
or at least greatly simplified their use; the law of 1982 simple 
codified what had been developing for some time. Your sentence makes it 
sound like a sudden and random decision.

2. I think it would be worth pointing out that unfortunately, Greek 
lowercase letters with acute accent occur separately in two unicode 
blocks: the combinations in U+03AC-U+03AF and U+03CC-U+03CF ("Greek 
small letter X with tonos") are functionally identical to the 
combinations in the U+1F7 block ("Greek small letter X with acute 
accent"). This is a source of confusion both in fonts and in 
programming, because some programs normalize these letters, so for 
string operations and searches, you may obtain surprising results.

Thank you for the article!

Thomas

On 1/21/23 13:16, Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki:
> 
>    https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek
> 
> Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues:
> 
> 1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern
> polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982.
> 
> ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for
> modern polytonic Greek
> (http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex/hyph-el-polyton.tex).
> 
> Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset
> both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography.
> 
> 2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as
> \currentdate).
> 
> In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them.
> 
> Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features.
> 
> Just in case it might help,
> 
> Pablo
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
> 
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
> webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
> archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
> wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
> ___________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: rewrite for Greek in the wiki

[Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context]

On 1/21/23 14:13, Thomas A. Schmitz via ntg-context wrote:
> Hi Pablo,
> 
> thanks for this; it is very informative and clear. Just one short remark 
> and one correction:

Many thanks for your review and your correction, Thomas.

> 1. "Before 1982, Greek ort[h]ography was polytonic." That's a bit of an 
> oversimplification.

Many thanks for noticing the typo in “orthography”.

The sentence you quote, it is an oversimplification (altough “from 1500”
is also “before 1982” 😅). I’m afraid I didn’t find the right way to
describe the difference between polytonic and monotonic systems.

I wanted to break the common misconception “if contemporary Greek is
monotonic, polytonic orthography is ancient Greek”. Either I’m totally
missing the whole question, or it is plainly wrong that polytonic means
ancient Greek (although ancient Greek is polytonic).

> [...]
> 2. I think it would be worth pointing out that unfortunately, Greek 
> lowercase letters with acute accent occur separately in two unicode 
> blocks: the combinations in U+03AC-U+03AF and U+03CC-U+03CF ("Greek 
> small letter X with tonos") are functionally identical to the 
> combinations in the U+1F7 block ("Greek small letter X with acute 
> accent").

Many thanks for pointing this out. I explicitly avoided, since it seems
to me a tricky question.

https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek#Monotonic_and_Acute_Accent is a way
of putting it.

> This is a source of confusion both in fonts and in programming,
> because some programs normalize these letters, so for string
> operations and searches, you may obtain surprising results.

“Charachter normalization” is tricky (for me, mainly with the Latin
alphabet).

https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek#On_“Character_Normalization” tries
to explain this.

> Thank you for the article!

Many thanks for your review,

Pablo
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________

Re: rewrite for Greek in the wiki

[Jean-Pierre Delange via ntg-context]

Thank you very much about this accurate "mise au point", Pablo !

Le 21/01/2023 à 13:16, Pablo Rodriguez via ntg-context a écrit :
> Dear list,
>
> just in case it might help, I’ve rewritten the Greek entry in the wiki:
>
>    https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Greek
>
> Although nobody seemed to have mentioned them (afaIk), there are two issues:
>
> 1. Hyphenation patterns are different for ancient, monotonic and modern
> polytonic Greek. Greek ortography was polytonic before 1982.
>
> ConTeXt includes patterns for ancient and monotonic Greek, but none for
> modern polytonic Greek
> (http://mirror.ctan.org/language/hyph-utf8/tex/generic/hyph-utf8/patterns/tex/hyph-el-polyton.tex).
>
> Ironically, modern polytonic Greek patterns would be required to typeset
> both the act and the decree that introduced the monotonic ortography.
>
> 2. Greek doesn’t seem to have language-dependent commands (such as
> \currentdate).
>
> In both cases, Hans will reply that nobody asked for any of them.
>
> Of course, I totally agree. AfaIk, nobody asked for these features.
>
> Just in case it might help,
>
> Pablo
> ___________________________________________________________________________________
> If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!
>
> maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
> webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
> archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
> wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
> ___________________________________________________________________________________

-- 
Jean-Pierre Delange
Ancients&Moderns
Professeur Agrégé de Philosophie (HC)

___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / https://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : https://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net
archive  : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/
wiki     : https://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________