Reading and writing in Greek ELOT-928 on a Mac

This page covers mainly MacOS systems. There are several resources on-line, but they are in Greece and communications are very slow with these sites. This is why copies of some of these resources are being offered through HR-Net.

Apple is using its own character set for displaying and printing Greek characters (ELOT 823). This variety in Greek sets caused incompatibility between different platforms and added problems in the use of Greek in WWW.

IBM-compatibles are more popular in Greece and Windows their is beloved platform. ELOT928, the Greek set used by Windows, is the first candidate for becoming a standard and the vast majority of Greek pages written in Greek are using it.

There was a need for Mac fonts able to decode and display ELOT928. True type fonts are the best candidates for conversion and 2 of the 3 fonts you will find in the packet presented are converted true type fonts originally created for Windows by Poyliadis associates corp. (HellasFun, HellasTimes)

The poor look of the converted fonts on MacOS systems was the reason for writing HellasHelvetica, a font based on the original MacOS font GrHelvetica with altered encoding following the ELOT928 protocol instead of the ELOT823.

[02] Writing ELOT928 in MacOS

Reading was the first necessary step taken to reach our aim, a complete package for Greek on Macs. To write ELOT928 what you need is the appropriate keyboard layout (driver) which teaches your system the ELOT928 encoding. The first functional version of this driver has been included in our package.

[03] Where can I find the Mac-ELOT928 package ?

• If you are outside Greece you can download it from the HR-Net server
• Alternatively you can try the Greek ftp site

If ftp is not an option for you, you can receive it by e-mail by sending a message to [email protected] with no subject including only the command:

get thessaloniki elot928_mac.sit.hqx

From Greece you may want to use the special mailing form.

NOTE: In all cases you have to be able to debin-hex and decode the file. If you don't have the appropriate software to do the trick then download Stuffit Expander.

Installation and usage instructions for the fonts and the keyboard layout can also be found in the README file that is included in the package.

Known bugs

In order to write capital Greek ELOT928 letters you have to press the 'Option/alt' key and not the normal 'Shift' key. 'Caps lock' it's not working properly either.

[04] Reading Greek on Netscape

Downloading the necessary fonts
The Hellas fonts group does not function very well with all ELOT928 text depending on what your selected options are. You get different results selecting for Language Encoding Greek (ISO) versus Greek (Mac). Hellas fonts work only with the latter. The proper solution is to install the Gr fonts family (GrTimes, GrHelvetica, GrCourier) and choose Greek (ISO) for Language encoding.

Thus, once you install the Gr fonts family:

1. Netscape Communicator (Netscape versions 4.x):


There are three steps that need to be followed:

 
1. First, you need to select the default encoding to be used when viewing pages. The default encoding is used when a page does not specify what language it is in, as is the case with most Greek pages on the WWW.


To do this, you need to select View -> Encoding -> Greek ISO-8859-7. In order to avoid repeating this step every time you start Netscape, you should also select View -> Encoding -> Set Default Encoding.

Note: ISO-8859-7 is the "proper" Greek encoding, as defined by the Greek Standards Organization (ELOT, hence ELOT928).

2. Next, you need to tell the browser which fonts should be used for the Greek encoding. To do this, you need to select Edit -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Fonts. Here, you should change For the Encoding to Greek, and enter fonts such as GrTimes for the Variable Width Font, and GrCourier for the Fixed Width Font.
3. Finally, for the Sometimes a document will provide its own fonts. option, we should select Use my default fonts, overriding document-specified fonts.

 
2. Netscape Navigator Versions 3.x:


There are two steps that need to be followed:

 
1. First, you need to select the default encoding to be used when viewing pages. The default encoding is used when a page does not specify what language it is in, as is the case with most Greek pages on the WWW.


To do this, you need to select Options -> Document Encoding -> Greek.

In order to avoid repeating this step every time you start Netscape, you should also select Options -> Document Encoding -> Set Default.

2. Next, you need to tell the browser which fonts should be used for the Greek encoding. To do this, you need to select Options -> General Preferences -> Fonts. For each of the Use the Proportional Font and Use the Fixed Font you should click on the Choose Font button, and select a font from the Gr fonts family.