%\magnification=\magstep1 \def\midspace#1{} \def\caption#1{} \input greekmacros \greekdelims \def\plus{\math{}+{}\math} \font\man=logo10 at 10true pt % font used for special symbols (old version) \def\MF{{\man META}\-{\man FONT}}% % macros for verbatim scanning \newskip\ttglue \ttglue=.5em plus.25em minus.15em \chardef\other=12 \def\ttverbatim{\begingroup \catcode`\\=\other \catcode`\{=\other \catcode`\}=\other \catcode`\$=\other \catcode`\&=\other \catcode`\#=\other \catcode`\%=\other \catcode`\~=\other \catcode`\_=\other \catcode`\^=\other \obeyspaces \obeylines \tt} \outer\def\begintt{$$\let\par=\endgraf \ttverbatim \parskip=\z@ \catcode`\|=0 \rightskip-5pc \ttfinish} {\catcode`\|=0 |catcode`|\=\other % | is temporary escape character |obeylines % end of line is active |gdef|ttfinish#1^^M#2\endtt{#1|vbox{#2}|endgroup$$}} \catcode`\|=\active {\obeylines \gdef|{\ttverbatim \spaceskip\ttglue \let^^M=\ \let|=\endgroup}} %\documentstyle{amsppt} %\nologo % %\topmatter %\title Typesetting Greek \endtitle %\author Silvio Levy \endauthor %\affil Princeton University \endaffil %\address{Fine Hall, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ, 08544} %\abstract{ %We discuss the design, creation and use of a family of Greek fonts for %\TeX. The fonts can be used for modern or classical %Greek, by themselves or in combination with the Computer Modern family %of fonts. A short historical introduction is followed by a discussion %of special topics, including the handling of accents and breathings, %hyphenation, and the two varieties of sigma. %} %\endtopmatter %\document % \font\eightpoint=cmr8 \font\twelverm=cmr10 at 12pt \def\heading#1\endheading{\bigskip\centerline{\twelverm#1}\medskip} %formatting conventions for proceedings \catcode`@=11 \font\titlefont=cmr17 \font\namefont=cmcsc12 \font\twelvebd=cmbx12 \font\twelverm=cmr12 \font\sixrm=cmr6 \vsize=43pc \hsize=29pc \parindent=16pt \nopagenumbers \normalbaselines \footline={\hss\sixrm\folio\hss} \def\makefootline{\baselineskip3pc\line{\the\footline}} \def\plainoutput{\shipout\vbox{\makeheadline\pagebody\makefootline}% \advancepageno \vsize=45pc \ifnum\outputpenalty>-\@MM \else\dosupereject\fi} \def\makeheadline{\vbox to\z@{\vskip-22.5\p@ \line{\vbox to8.5\p@{}\ifnum\count0=1 \else\ifodd\count0 \hfill\the\doctitle\ignorespaces \else \the\authorname\hfill\fi\fi}\vss}\nointerlineskip} \newtoks\doctitle \newtoks\authorname \doctitle={Typesetting Greek} \authorname={Silvio Levy} \catcode`@=12 % at signs are no longer letters \tenrm \begingroup \titlefont \the\doctitle \vskip 3pc \namefont\the\authorname \tenrm \vskip 1pc {\obeylines Mathematics Department Princeton University Princeton, NJ, 08544 } \vskip 3pc \line{\hfill\twelvebd ABSTRACT\hfill} \vskip 3pc \leftskip 4pc \rightskip 4pc We discuss the design, creation and use of a family of Greek fonts for \TeX. The fonts can be used for modern or classical Greek, by themselves or in combination with the Computer Modern family of fonts. A short historical introduction is followed by a discussion of special topics, including the handling of accents and breathings, hyphenation, and the two varieties of sigma. \par \endgroup \vskip 3pc \heading A Bit of History \endheading During the first four centuries after the introduction of the printing press in Europe, the printing of Greek was hampered by the relative inadequacy of existing types, at least in comparison with the quality and variety of the best roman fonts. This was partly a consequence of the antiquity of the language and its consequent evolution in both writing and pronunciation: not only did the letterforms change over time, but they came to be adorned with a multitude of diacritical marks, a legacy of zealous scribes and grammarians anxious to preserve the pristine state of the language that lent them their prestige. In the early days we find that the few printers that attempted to cut Greek type generally ignored all this complexity, either disregarding the diacritics or casting them separately and setting them above each line of text. Some texts were printed in lowercase only; others would make do with roman capitals like `A' and even some lowercase roman glyphs, like `v' for `$n$'. (See figures 1--12 in [Brit.~Mus.~1927], an excellent historical survey.) In 1495 Aldus Manutius introduced cursive greeks. They became a resounding success, as they reproduced the florid and idiosyncratic handwriting of the day, full of abbreviations and ligatures. The inordinate number of ligatures is in fact the most striking feature of such fonts: for example, Fell's ``Great Primer Greek'' [Morison 1967, p.~102] has sorts for many four-letter words and prefixes. Although skilfully typeset books using cursive fonts are undeniably beautiful (see [Brit.~Mus.~1927], figure 29), the use of so many ligatures was a nightmare for compositor and reader alike, since in some cases the component letters are virtually unidentifiable. Gradually the fonts were scaled down in size, but the practice of imitating handwriting remained until the end of the eighteenth century, when Bodoni, G\"oschen and Didot paved the way back to a more sober course. Still problems remained. Porson's greek [Mosley 1960], first used in 1826 and destined to become the standard of the English-speaking world, continues the illogical tradition of mixing upright capitals with slanted minuscules; in particular the blending of Greek and roman text leads to poor results (figure 1). Didot's design was somewhat more felicitous, and became standard in Italy, France and Greece itself (figure 2), but the type is narrow and irregular, bearing, according to Scholderer [Brit.~Mus.~1927, p.~14], the `malign mark' of Bodoni's greeks (which were admittedly not a match for his inspired romans). \midspace{1.1truein} \caption{\eightpoint Figure 1} \midspace{1.2truein} \caption{\eightpoint Figure 2} (Incidentally, the different treatment of capitals established itself in mathematical typesetting. In English books, Greek capitals are the only math letters that are not slanted; in French and German books they conform with the rest. The Computer Modern Greek faces are based on Porson. They are, of course, meant for math; when used for text, as in [Wonneberger 1987], the results fall short of the perfection achievable with \TeX.) It was not until the beginning of this century that really well-designed Greek types became available, including Scholderer's `New Hellenic' type (figure 3), based on a pre-Aldine model, and the Monotype font shown in figure 4, a much improved version of Didot's design and perhaps the typeface most favored for high-quality printing in Greece during the last few decades. \midspace{1.1truein} \caption{\eightpoint Figure 3} \midspace{1.3truein} \caption{\eightpoint Figure 4} \heading Requirements \endheading My main motivation in designing a family of Greek fonts is the preparation of a Modern Greek--English dictionary. This in itself makes the design more exacting: the fonts should not only look good individually and in combination, but also blend well with Computer Modern fonts; there should be at least three main styles, different enough that no special effort to distinguish between them is required, even in small point size; and the typing should be as painless as possible on a standard (English) keyboard. This last condition is, of course, open to interpretation, but I define it to mean that each grapheme (letter, accent, etc.)~should require as few keystrokes as possible---generally one, but occasionally more, like accents in English. In esthetic terms there are a lot of details to work out, but the foundation has been laid. I follow loosely the type shown in figure 4, which shares several features with the Computer Modern roman: sharp contrast between thicks and thins, similar letter widths, and a wealth of texture and detail. (This is not surprising since the `modern' family of fonts goes back to Bodoni and Didot.) But it also has distinguishing features, which recapture some of the beauty of cursive writing: its strokes are more fluid, and there is no left-right symmetry (compare a roman `o' with a greek `$o$'). Modern Greek has traditionally been typeset with the diacritic apparatus of ancient Greek, which is very rich: it contains two accents, the acute $'$ and the grave $`$, that can go over any vowel, plus one, the circumflex $~$, that can go over the vowels $ahiuw$; two so-called breathings $<>$, one of which goes over every vowel or diphthong in initial position; the diaeresis $"$, that can go over $i$ and $u$; and the iota subscript $|$, that can go under $ahw$. An accent plus a breathing, or an accent plus the dieresis, can coexist; furthermore any accent, breathing or accent-breathing combination can share a vowel with an iota subscript. Here, for example, are the 24 possible varieties of lowercase $a$: \display \hbox{$a 'a `a ~a a >'a >`a >~a a| 'a| `a| ~a| a| >'a| >`a| >~a|$} \display In the last several decades the tendency has been to get rid of these complications, and now the ``official'' system in use in Greece includes only one accent and the dieresis, without breathings or iota subscripts. Even though I work primarily with modern Greek, however, I thought it short-sighted not to include the whole apparatus, having in mind both classicists and those traditionalists who still prefer the three-accent system, as do some publishing houses. It was clear right away that these diacritics should be implemented as ligatures, not as \TeX\ accents, because in \TeX\ words that include accents cannot be hyphenated. This implied that 128 font positions were not enough. Fortunately \TeX\ and \MF\ are well equipped to handle 256-position fonts, though most device drivers are not (see the section `Other Problems'). Following the one-keystroke-per-grapheme rule, then, one can conjure up the last alpha in the display above by typing |>~a|{\tt\char`\|}, which accesses a four-character ligature. The remaining conventions for diacritics are: |'| and |`| for the acute and grave, respectively; |"| for the dieresis; and |<| for the rough breathing. (If you're wondering how to produce quotation marks, or $((e>isagwgik'a))$, it's by typing |((| and |))|.) \heading The Font Layout \endheading A further complication has to do with the letter sigma. According to Knuth [1980], the letter `s' is in a class by itself in terms of complexity of design; its Greek counterpart is similarly difficult, though for different reasons. A sigma in initial or medial position in the word is written $c$, but in final position it is written $s$. Since the alternation is entirely conditioned, it seemed a pity to require different characters in the \TeX\ file to represent the two varieties of sigma. The first solution I tried made no assumptions on the font. It consisted in making `s' an active character, which checked the next token and printed $c$ if it was a letter, $s$ otherwise. There were two drawbacks to this procedure: the letter `s' could not be used in control sequences, and the check was expensive. (It also didn't work when the next token was a control sequence that expanded to one or more letters.) A better idea is to save one position in the font for an invisible dummy character. All punctuation marks (and the space) are made active; they expand to the dummy end-of-word character, plus the punctuation character. An `s' by itself prints as $c$, while an `s' in ligature with the dummy---which is to say, at the end of a word---prints as $s$. All other letters yield themselves when in ligature with the dummy. This is still not ideal for two reasons: \TeX\ is always ``obeying spaces,'' and words separated by something other than punctuation or spaces (say |\par|) count as one. (But this might be the only practicable solution for the Hebrew alphabet, which has five chameleon letters.) The solution I chose avoids the drawbacks above, at the expense of several positions in the font. Namely, the font contains each of the possible combinations $sa$, $sb$, \dots, $sw$, which are automatically accessed as ligatures when the word contains `s' followed by a letter. \pageinsert { \font\twelverm=cmr12 \font\twelvei=cmmi12 \skewchar\twelvei='177 \font\twelvesy=cmsy12 \skewchar\twelvesy='60 \font\twelvebf=cmbx12 \font\twelvett=cmtt12 \hyphenchar\twelvett=-1 \font\twelvesl=cmsl12 \font\twelveit=cmti12 \def\twelvepoint{\def\rm{\fam0\twelverm}% \textfont0=\twelverm \textfont1=\twelvei \textfont2=\twelvesy \textfont3=\tenex \def\it{\fam\itfam\twelveit}% \textfont\itfam=\twelveit \def\sl{\fam\slfam\twelvesl}% \textfont\slfam=\twelvesl \def\bf{\fam\bffam\twelvebf}% \textfont\bffam=\twelvebf \scriptfont\bffam=\sevenbf \scriptscriptfont\bffam=\fivebf \def\tt{\fam\ttfam\twelvett}% \textfont\ttfam=\twelvett \tt \ttglue=.5em plus.25em minus.15em \normalbaselineskip=14.5pt \setbox\strutbox=\hbox{\vrule height10.5pt depth4pt width0pt}% \normalbaselines\rm} \twelvepoint \font\my=grreg10 scaled \magstep1 \centerline{ \def\:{\char\count255\global\advance\count255 by 1} \count255='0 \vbox{ \hbox{\hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill0\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill1\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill2\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill3\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill4\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill5\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill6\/\hfill}% \hbox to 40pt{\it\hfill7\/\hfill}} \vskip 4pt \hrule \def\^{\vrule height 10.5pt depth 4.5pt} \halign{\hbox to 0pt{\hskip -24pt {\rm\'{}\kern-.2em\it#}\hfill}&\^ \hbox to 40pt{\my\hfill#\hfill\^}& &\hbox to 40pt{\my\hfill#\hfill\^}\cr 00&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 01&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 02&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 03&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 04&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 05&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 06&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 07&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 10&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 11&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 12&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 13&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 14&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 15&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 16&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 17&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 20&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 21&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 22&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 23&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 24&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 25&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 26&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 27&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 30&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 31&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 32&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 33&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 34&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 35&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 36&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule} 37&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:&\:\cr\noalign{\hrule}}} } } \endinsert With all the s\plus letter combinations and all the vowels with diacritics, it turns out that not even 256 characters are enough. Since I couldn't push the font size any further, I decided to eliminate some of the vowel\plus diacritic combinations. The obvious candidates were the combinations of breathings with grave accent, which can only occur in a restricted number of monosyllables, and thus can be typeset as accents, because no hyphenation is required anyway. So I made the characters |<| and |>| active. Depending on whether or not the next character is $`$, these active characters expand to an |\accent| or to a |\char|, the latter meant to form a ligature with what comes next. (Actually, things are not quite so simple. A breathing or accent over a capital vowel is traditionally written before the letter, so the |\accent| control sequence is only emitted if the following character is lowercase.) The complete layout of the fonts is shown on the next page. There are a few unfilled positions, two of which I'm saving for the digamma, whose design I haven't yet tackled. \heading Other Problems \endheading In order to write continuous text, I had to prepare a modern Greek hyphenation table, which I'm currently testing. The hyphenation of modern Greek follows closely that of ancient Greek, which is straightforward (that is, described by a fairly short set of rules) because Greek had originally a phonetic script---one letter for each phoneme and vice versa. This conservatism means that hyphenation does not necessarily occur between syllables, as in the word $stau-r'os$ `cross', now pronounced [sta\'{}vros]; but this apparently doesn't bother anyone. One difficulty, however, cannot be resolved by means of mechanical rules: the digraphs $mp$, $nt$ and $gk$ are sometimes pronounced as nasal\plus voiced stop, sometimes as voiced stop alone, depending on the word (also sometimes on the speaker). In the first case, the group can be split, but in the second, one should hyphenate before the group. This problem seems to be solvable only by trial and error. The last problem I want to discuss is that of device drivers. We have been using various |dvi|-to-PostScript drivers in Princeton, and I found that none of them would work with 256-character fonts, even though both \TeX\ and PostScript are designed to handle such fonts. I was, however, able to adapt Nelson Beebe's excellent driver |dvialw| [Beebe 1987] after making only three changes, because the program is well written and well documented. I exhort all those who write |dvi| drivers to include 256-character fonts in their design, since they will certainly become more necessary as \TeX\ extends its reach around the world. \heading Bibliography \endheading \def\\{\smallskip\hangindent=\parindent\hangafter=1\noindent\ignorespaces} \\ Nelson H. F. Beebe, Public domain \TeX\ DVI driver family, {\it TUGboat}, {\bf 8}:1 (1987), 41--42. \\ British Museum, {\it Greek Printing Types}, London, British Museum, 1927. \\ Donald E. Knuth, The Letter S, {\it The Mathematical Intelligencer}, {\bf 2} (1980), 114--122. \\ Stanley Morison, {\it John Fell: the University Press and the `Fell' Types}, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1967. \\ J. M. Mosley, Porson's Greek Types, {\it Penrose Annual}, {\bf 54} (1960), 36--40. \\ Reinhard Wonneberger, Typesetting `Normaltext', {\it TUGboat}, {\bf 8}:1 (1987), 63--72. \end