Polytonic Greek (SIL) Keyboard Help

Greek keyboard layout supporting Polytonic Greek, using precomposed characters.

Desktop Keyboard Layout

Keyboard Assignments

The main purpose of the keyboards is to provide a wide range of keying options, so many characters can be entered in multiple ways. If you are typing and make a mistake and use the backspace key to delete characters, the keyboard remembers the context.

Letters

The keyboard automatically chooses the correct code for the sigma depending upon the encoding and the context, so the correct final form is used when appropriate.

When editing text, you may find you need to insert a medial sigma in the middle of a word; this can typed with AltGr+S.

When gamma occurs before another gamma, it can be typed as ng, meaning that ἀγγελος can be typed (space) anggelos. When gamma occurs before kappa, xi or chi, it can be typed as n. Note that ng alone produces νγ, as in μενουνγε.

Diacritics

Diacritics are usually typed after vowels, but may also be typed before word-initial vowels and should be typed before uppercase letters. They can be combined in any order. If you accidentally type the wrong diacritic, you can change it by typing the correct one immediately.

Breath Marks

A smooth breathing is automatically added to a word-initial vowel and a rough breathing to a word-initial rho. To get a rough breathing on an initial vowel, type h, e.g. huper for ὑπερ . If you type a word that is all uppercase, the initial breathing mark is automatically removed.

Like other diacritics, they are usually typed after vowels, but may be typed before word-initial vowels. They can also be combined with other diacritics by typing them in any order after the base character. If you type a diphthong, any breath marks and accents on the first vowel are correctly moved to the second vowel.

For example, to type Οὐκ εἰμι ἐγω ὁ Χριστος. (ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ 3 28) you only need to press the following keys:
O u k SPACE e i m i SPACE e g w SPACE h o SPACE C r i s t o s PERIOD SPACE ( I W A N N J N SPACE 3 : 2 8 )

You can use AltGr+vowel to get an isolated lower case vowel or rho without breathing marks.

You can also press * to remove the breathing mark from a vowel or rho.

In a few words, a vowel with dieresis follows an accented vowel. You will need to type @ before the vowel with dieresis to get the right behavior. For example, to get Ἰάϊρος, type Ia/@i"ros.