--- On Wed 05/01, David J. Perry wrote:
> There are in fact about 70 combinations of marks that may be needed for
> polytonic Greek that are not precomposed in Unicode. This includes the
> upsilon + smooth breathing already mentioned, epsilon and omicron with
> circumflex (and with breathings) used in epigraphy, as well as all the
> doubtful vowels with macron plus accents/breathings. The latter are
> used in grammars and reference books that want to show quantity (not
> normally printed in standard editions of literary texts).
>
> If I were to make a complete OT Greek font, with all the above as well
> as the combinations already in Unicode, which would provide better
> performance: substitutions or positioning via OT features?
>
> David
>
> > However, I agree that in the case of polytonic Greek,
> > given the relatively small number of unencoded glyphs that would be
> > required, it makes more sense to use ligature substitutions.
> >
> > John Hudson
----Reply----
Here's what I have listed for additional accented Greek letters:
·epsilon & omikron + circumflex ( also + breath mark [smooth and rough])
·üpsilon + smooth breath mark (also + accent mark [acute, circumflex, and grave])
·zeta, sigma, & L-C final sigma + umlaut (for Grk. rendition of /sh, zh/-type sounds)
·gamma + accent mark (macron, overdot, and tilde) for distinguishing the 3 different sounds (/gh, y, ng/) it has in Modern Greek
·vowels and certain consonants + tilde—for indicating nazalized &/or voiced sounds occuring (especially) in Modern Greek
·other consonants + dot (underdot and overdot)—to indicate other sounds absent from Greek
In all, it'll run to over 100+ different additional letter+accent(s) combinations to render in fonts—it's best done by using an OpenType GSUB-like lookup table, to make sure the various marks get positioned correctly onto any base character; on accented H-C letters, you'd have a choice of either setting such mark(s) aside the letter (involving the character), or placing marks directly onto the capital letter(s) (which is what I prefer—even for Greek).
’Efkharistô!
Robert Lloyd Wheelock
Augusta, ME U.S.A.
(PS.: *Augusta* [I think] would be *’Avgh(o)ustá(s)* in Modern Greek.)
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