wcs@ho95e.UUCP (#Bill_Stewart) (03/31/86)
In article <492@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> wolff@ucbopal.BERKELEY.EDU (Jane Wolff) writes: >I'm working on ditroff font width tables for Greek fonts for our >Autologic APS-Micro 5 phototypesetter. There are quite a few >characters on the APS's Greek fonts that I haven't seen before >on other devices' Greek fonts, and some for which there seem to >be different names on different devices. ... >For the alpha-to-omega characters it makes sense to go with what >we already have on our Versatec, where: > eta=H theta=Q xi=X chi=C psi=Y >and everything else is as on the original troff special font. >(Can anyone shed any light on why these are different?) Well, Capital Eta is an H shape. Are you sure you haven't mixed up xi and chi? XI is often pronounced "si" by people who can't handle "ksi", and chi is X-shaped (lowercase curved.) >Has anyone assigned mappings to these characters (on any device)? > alternate lowercase sigma (terminal sigma) One of my troff manuals at least has a \(ts for it >....[lots deleted] > iota subscript sure would be nice! > coppa (a Byzantine character? not Greek, but on these fonts) Actually, it is Greek, but archaic. The letter is vaguely q-shaped, and sounds about like the Arabic Q in Iraq or Qaddafi. There's also a digamma, which is F-shaped (stack two capital Gammas), and has a v or w sound - it shows up in oinos (wine), and a few other words, or rather fails to show up (Homer may have used them ~800BC, but by Plato's time ~500BC it was unused - still affects declension/ conjugation of a few words. I think I saw more of this in Xenophon (Ionic dialect) than Plato's Attic, but I barely survived that semester.) Rough & Smooth Breathing marks? -- # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
wcs@ho95e.UUCP (#Bill_Stewart) (03/31/86)
In article <492@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> wolff@ucbopal.BERKELEY.EDU (Jane Wolff) writes: >I'm working on ditroff font width tables for Greek fonts for our >Autologic APS-Micro 5 phototypesetter. There are quite a few >characters on the APS's Greek fonts that I haven't seen before >on other devices' Greek fonts, and some for which there seem to >be different names on different devices. ... >For the alpha-to-omega characters it makes sense to go with what >we already have on our Versatec, where: > eta=H theta=Q xi=X chi=C psi=Y >and everything else is as on the original troff special font. >(Can anyone shed any light on why these are different?) Well, Capital Eta is an H shape. Are you sure you haven't mixed up xi and chi? XI is often pronounced "si" by people who can't handle "ksi", and chi is X-shaped (lowercase curved.) >Has anyone assigned mappings to these characters (on any device)? > alternate lowercase sigma (terminal sigma) One of my troff manuals at least has a \(ts for it >....[lots deleted] > iota subscript sure would be nice! > coppa (a Byzantine character? not Greek, but on these fonts) Actually, it is Greek, but archaic. The letter (sp qoppa?) is vaguely q-shaped, and sounds about like the Arabic Q in Iraq or Qaddafi. There's also a digamma, which is F-shaped (stack two capital Gammas), and has a v or w sound - it shows up in oinos (wine), and a few other words, or rather fails to show up (Homer may have used them ~800BC, but by Plato's time ~500BC it was unused - still affects declension/ conjugation of a few words. I think I saw more of this in Xenophon (Ionic dialect) than Plato's Attic, but I barely survived that semester.) -- # Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (04/02/86)
Jane Wolff (wolff@ucbopal.BERKELEY.EDU) writes in net.text: > I'm working on ditroff font width tables for Greek fonts for our > Autologic APS-Micro 5 phototypesetter. There are quite a few > characters on the APS's Greek fonts that I haven't seen before > on other devices' Greek fonts ... > ... > coppa (a Byzantine character? not Greek...) > sampi Perhaps these characters are provided so that one of the old Greek numeral systems can be typeset. That system was one of the ones that assigned every letter of the alphabet a numeric value. The values assigned were 1,2,3,...9, 10,20,30,...90, 100,200,300,...900. Unfortunately the Greek alphabet is only 24 letters long. To make it up to the required 27, 3 obsolete characters were inserted: van between eta and zeta (thus = 6) koppa between pi and rho (thus = 90) sampi after omega (thus = 900). Van looks rather like an s with the top stretched up; if it's not on the font, I suppose the alternate lower case sigma is close. Koppa is a Q with the tail pointing straight down, and sampi is like a backwards C overstruck with an upward-slanted = sign. Reference: "A History of Mathematical Notations" by Florian Cajori, vol. 1, 1928, reprinted 1974. Mark Brader P.S. [1] Please direct any followups to the appropriate single newsgroup. [2] With all the remarks flying around lately about inaccurate values attempted to be assigned to pi, I'm surprised that nobody else has pointed out that the ancient Greeks made it 80... :-)