[akreis]

Hi there,
I try to work with the greek language and read greek email or homepages on my I Mac using Mac OSX? I could not figure out how this works. Could anyone give my a hint? Please stay basic, as I am a beginner with internet forums! By the way, I am using the latest version of microsoft office. Cheers Andréas

[JKT]

Originally posted by akreis:
Hi there,
I try to work with the greek language and read greek email or homepages on my I Mac using Mac OSX? I could not figure out how this works. Could anyone give my a hint? Please stay basic, as I am a beginner with internet forums! By the way, I am using the latest version of microsoft office. Cheers Andréas

I can't guarantee that this is definitely how you do it, but I think it should work...

Open System Preferences and click the International pane

Under the Languages Tab, click the Edit button and activate Greek as a language.

Drag Greek to the top of the list to have it as your preferred language in menus etc.

Under the Input Menu tab, select the Greek input icon to enter Greek text in applications (a Greek flag should appear in the menu bar).

In your browser, you will need to choose the Greek character set/encoding to see web pages in Greek. This will be in either the preferences or one of the menus depending on the browser.

HTH (hope that helps)!

[sniffer]

Is this an MS Office issue?

[phobos]

akreis do what jkt says and also download safari.It supports the greek language by default. Also choose the correct encing on mail and you'll be fine.OSX for a change supports greek quite well.If you need more information on other programs and greek (like in design) post it and I'll be back. Sorry for the quick answer but I'm on a hurry here. Whatever you need post it and I'll reply in more detail.

[dfiler]

[relevant but not useful background info]

Greek has not come nicely into the computer age. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of problems specifically related to Greek character encoding and fonts.

When standard character sets were first developed, they used fewer bits per character. These included 'standards' for 7,8,9, and variable bit length characters. Unfortunately, this means that there weren't enough characters available to store all the common characters AND all of the greek characters.

One solution to this was to use the same range of numbers to denote an alternate, greek character set. All you need for greek documents in this format is the appropriate greek font. This is a rather intelligent solution with quite a few inherent problems.

There is another greek 'hack' that is sometimes used on the internet. However, it has failed to catch on and suffers from many shortcomings as well. Sorry, i don't even know the name of this format. A quick google search could turn up more info quite quickly.

Thus, along came our savior, unicode. There are enough character 'slots' in unicode to represent every single glyph in every single language on the planet. One font could be used for all languages. However, unicode support is still not seamless.

Does anyone know if unicode is in the html spec yet? If it is, you're in luck... assuming that the greek sites you visit are encoded in unicode.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by akreis:
Hi there,
I try to work with the greek language and read greek email or homepages on my I Mac using Mac OSX? I could not figure out how this works. Could anyone give my a hint? Please stay basic, as I am a beginner with internet forums! By the way, I am using the latest version of microsoft office. Cheers Andréas

Assuming that your programs allow you to type using Unicode fonts, then the built-in Greek keyboard will work great. Microsoft Office, unfortunately, does not support Unicode encoding (on the Mac... it does on the PC, though)

If you want to use non-unicode fonts, then you can go to the Greek Patch for Mac OS page, and download the patcher, which will have keyboards that will let you use the old MacGreek encoding. That page also has some fonts that you can use with that keyboard.

If you want to buy your own fonts that support MacGreek, or if you want to buy some Unicode fonts that will work with the built-in Greek keyboard layout (with applications like TextEdit), then you can go to Magenta Software and order some fonts.

Finally, to view web pages properly in Greek, you will have to use Safari or OmniWeb, as Internet Explorer doesn't work very well.

Also iTunes uses Unicode, and you can enter track names in Greek using Apple's built in Unicode keyboard... see the picture below.

The Greek Mac community is another good source of information... go to the HelMug Greek Macintosh User's Group for that.

Oh, and kalos irthes sto Mac!

Click here for the picture

[Simon X]

Some thing you might find amusing, maybe…

My Greek is a bit rusty, so recently when I was having difficulty reading a Greek newspaper article I thought I'd use Sherlock's language translating channel. Alas I don't know how to input Greek text, my OS and keyboard are British English, when suddenly I hit on a bright idea, the Character Palette. Now, you try entering the text one c <insert> h <insert> a <insert> r <insert> e <insert> c <insert> t <insert> e <insert> r at a time.

I'm practising reading a bit more now.

[Simon X]

Originally posted by Person Man:
The Greek Mac community is another good source of information... go to the HelMug Greek Macintosh User's Group for that.

What's with all the English on the site? I can understand for product names, web addresses and so on, but not the section tabs or some other unnecessary uses.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by Simon X:
What's with all the English on the site? I can understand for product names, web addresses and so on, but not the section tabs or some other unnecessary uses.

Den xero. Mipos theloun na deichnoun oti einai diethnes website

<Translation for the Greek-impaired> I don't know. Maybe they want to demonstrate that they are an international website

[nickm]

What type of Greek do you want to enter? If all you are interested in is monotoniko, then you can use the Greek keyboard in 10.2 to type into Text Edit or Mail (I'm not sure how well Greek goes through email, though). As a number of people have said, MS Office doesn't do Unicode, which makes it useless for Greek.

If you need polytoniko Greek, you will need to use Greekkeys.

Finally, for what it's worth, I think that most of the Greek fonts you find on the web (Unicode or otherwise) are ugly. The version of Times New Roman that ships with Windows 2000 and XP has the most attractive Greek I've seen. If you have a copy, you can dump it in your fonts folder and be off to the races. I still haven't figured out, though, how to make it the default font for Greek system-wide.

[Simon X]

Originally posted by Person Man:
Den xero. Mipos theloun na deichnoun oti einai diethnes website

<Translation for the Greek-impaired> I don't know. Maybe they want to demonstrate that they are an international website

isos

[Person Man]

Originally posted by Simon X:
isos

I believe what you really meant to say is "akrivos" (meaning "exactly")

[Simon X]

Originally posted by Person Man:
I believe what you really meant to say is "akrivos" (meaning "exactly")

isos

(err, that is perhaps isn't it?)

[akreis]

This is exactly my problem. I don't know if I have to do some changement in the MS office or on OSX!

[sapiens]

You want a solution? get in touch with me at sapiens@mac.com

[Person Man]

Originally posted by Simon X:
isos

(err, that is perhaps isn't it?)

Perhaps, so but the better word for that would be "mipos" (maybe) (spelled with eta and not iota)

[Person Man]

Originally posted by akreis:
This is exactly my problem. I don't know if I have to do some changement in the MS office or on OSX!

If you want to use MS office in Greek, then go to the Greek Patch Page (see my earlier post above for the link) and get the OS X patch and the fonts offered there, and you should be able to use Office (not the best solution, but it will work-- you won't be able to share Greek documents with PC users, though). I don't know of any way to change Office, short of forcing Microsoft to adopt the Unicode standard for Office v.X (Let's hope Office 11 fixes this).

To megalo problima einai oti Rainbow Computers (Apple's Representatives in Greece) den theloun na mirazoun tin elliniki ekdosi tou Mac OS X exo apo tin Ellada. Koitaxe sto Helmug gia perissoteres plirofories.

[Simon X]

Originally posted by Person Man:
Perhaps, so but the better word for that would be "mipos" (maybe) (spelled with eta and not iota)

Yes, I thought about that, but in English "perhaps" just seemed a better word use.

Originally posted by Person Man:
To megalo problima einai oti Rainbow Computers (Apple's Representatives in Greece) den theloun na mirazoun tin elliniki ekdosi tou Mac OS X exo apo tin Ellada. Koitaxe sto Helmug gia perissoteres plirofories.

I remember reading about these guys before, and just as I said then, I'll say it again, "you guys should complain to some government body." Anticompetitive, monopolistic, stifling the Greek language, whatever. Look, I know it may not be easy, but is there not something you can try?

[akreis]

My mac does not support the greek language on syst. pref. I have tried that before. Probably I need to install the Jag as others wrote. Or can I find the greek language on the original CD? Thanks for your help. Andrea

[NeoMac]

You need Jaguar.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by Simon X:
I remember reading about these guys before, and just as I said then, I'll say it again, "you guys should complain to some government body." Anticompetitive, monopolistic, stifling the Greek language, whatever. Look, I know it may not be easy, but is there not something you can try?

I believe Greek Mac users are indeed trying that. It won't do me any good, though, because I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for that (I'm first generation American born to a Greek father and American mother), so it won't help me. But then, OS X as it stands is fine for me, because English is my primary language, and all I use Greek for in the operating system is to enter my MP3 titles. My father is a different story, however.

If you buy one of Rainbow's cheaper, English only systems (in Greece), they won't give you the software. What's more, the software requires a serial number that is keyed to the computer's serial number (you know, the one that is displayed in Apple System Profiler).