Ancient Greek (symbols versus letters and duplicate letters)

From: Edward C. D. Hopkins (chopkins@ameritech.net)
Date: Mon Apr 07 2003 - 15:32:07 EDT

  • Next message: John Cowan: "Re: Ancient Greek (symbols versus letters and duplicate letters)"

    Related to my question on how to handle multiple glyphs for one Greek
    character, there are seeming inconsistencies where Unicode provides more
    than one codepoint for a single Greek letter.

    Symbols vs. Letters:
    When typing a lunate Sigma in a Greek inscription, I can chose either U+03A3
    GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA or U+03F9 GREEK CAPITAL LUNATE SIGMA SYMBOL
    (listed in UC 4.0 beta as an "archaic letter"). Visit my chart at
    http://parthia.com/fonts/glyphchart.htm to see nine variants of Sigma used
    in numismatic inscriptions, only one of which is lunate Sigma. More glyph
    forms are found in non-numismatic inscriptions. Since there is no apparent
    difference in meaning, but only a difference in the artistic style of the
    glyph, does the "symbol" connotation somehow explain why two letters with
    the same meaning have been placed in Unicode?

    Duplicate Letters:
    If I am typing a Greek inscription, how do I decide whether to use U+03DE
    GREEK LETTER KOPPA or U+03D8 GREEK LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA? Aren't these the
    same letter with a difference only in artistic rendering? Unicode does not
    use the "symbol" connotation in this case. Why give two artistic forms of
    the same letter?

    Could someone please explain why there are duplications?

    Thank you,

    Chris Hopkins

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