Entering Greek Characters
Accordance automatically uses the Helena font for all Greek text. Most of the letters of the Greek alphabet have been placed in the familiar positions of their transliterated letters in Roman fonts. The accents and breathing marks are organized so they are easy to find. Text can also be entered using the international Greek Polytonic Keyboard; this option is set in the Greek & Hebrew area of the Preferences dialog box.
Two Accordance text entry features facilitate the correct entry of the Greek. These features can be turned off for all Accordance tabs via the Preferences dialog box (Greek & Hebrew area).
The Automatic final letter feature alters the form of the Greek sigma depending on its position in the word. As you press “s”, the final sigma form appears. But if sigma is followed by another letter, it takes the regular form.
The Automatic diacritical marks feature affects the various overstrike characters—accents and breathing marks and their combinations. Most accents and other diacriticals are entered after (to the right of) the character. Most are offered with a short, medium, and long overstrike for correct positioning over or under each character.
As you enter any of the overstrike positions of the specific accent or mark, Accordance enters the character or the combination with the correct amount of overstrike for the previous or following letter. If you enter an accent and a breathing mark after the same vowel, the correct combination character is entered. Before an uppercase vowel you must enter the non-overstrike breathing mark (option or shift-option-J) before the vowel, and any position of the accent, in order to get the combination.
Therefore, you can learn just one keystroke for each overstrike character, and still create correctly accented text.
More About the Helena Font
Most of the accents, breathing marks, and combinations occur in four positions. The non-overstrike character is used before a capital letter. The rest of the characters are left-overstrike characters. They must be typed to the right of the letter in order to appear over or under it. The overstrike characters have three positions, depending on the width of the associated letter. The medium overstrike character is the most accessible. In general, the option position is used for short overstrike accents, and the shift-option position is used for the long overstrike accents.
Characters were added to the Helena font to allow use of accents with upper-case characters, as shown below.
The Characters Popover
The Characters popover displays the special characters of the selected Accordance font. You can enter characters in the Search Entry box of a tab, or in any Edit window.
To open this popover, do one of the following:
- Click Characters (
) on the toolbar - Select Characters from the Window menu.
- Press
+
|
Note The Characters Popover can also be detached using by clicking the Detach button ( |
), and then closed manually.When working with the Characters popover, note that:
- If the insertion bar rests in suitable editable text, such as an entry box, clicking a character highlights it and enters it into the window.
- You can change the font in the Characters popover and then enter the correct font, character and direction in the User Tools or User Notes Edit windows, the User Layer of the Atlas, and the description boxes of Construct and Reference list tabs.
- If you set the Preferences to use a modern Greek or Hebrew keyboard, the popover enters the correct character even though the Details Bar at the bottom of the box identifies the keystroke in the standard Accordance font.
The Characters popover is shown below.
| No. | Button/Option | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Font | Opens the Font pop-up menu for selecting a special Accordance font | Items are: Helena, Yehudit, Rosetta, MSS, Sylvanus, Peshitta, and Salaam |
| 2 | Show/Hide options | You can show or hide the letters, diacriticals (Greek), pointing and cantillation (Hebrew), or special characters | The popover automatically resizes to fit your selection |
| 3 | Float | Click to change the popover to a floating palette that remains open after working with it | Normally the popover closes after each use. If you want to access it more often, click this item. |
| 4 | Letters | Displays all letters for the selected font | Characters can only be entered into a Search Entry box that is set to the same font. Clicks are ignored if the search Text or Tool field requires a different font. |
| 5 | Diacriticals (Grk) or Pointing and Cantillation (Hebrew) | Displays diacritical characters for this font (or pointing and cantillation for Hebrew fonts) | Overstrike characters are shown relative to the gray boxes |
| 6 | Special Characters | Displays other special characters with this font | |
| 7 | Details Bar | Identifies the character and associated keystroke for the indicated letter | This is updated as you move the cursor over the characters |
To enter a double quote via the Greek Polytonic non-unicode keyboard, press