A polytonic Greek layout based on Beta Code Greek layout with some additions to easily write UTF-8 encoded polytonic Greek characters for Classical Philologists.
This repo provides a greek input method based on Beta Code for inputting all greek polytonic glyphs useful to Classical Scholars.
Put the file greek-beta-code.el wherever you like, then add this lines in ~/.emacs.d/init.el:
;; Tell emacs where is your personal elisp lib dir
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/lisp/")
;; Enable Greek Keyboard
(require 'greek-beta-code)
In the previous example it was assumed that the file was placed in the folder ~/.emacs.d/lisp: adjust it to suit your needs.
It is also possible to add into the same file a shortcut (for ex. Ctrl+g = C-g) to switch to this keyboard layout:
;; Input method and key binding configuration.
(setq alternative-input-methods
'((("greek-beta-code" . [?\C-g])))
Diacrytics must be written after vowels according the following order:
<letter>-<length>-<diaeresis>-<breathing>-<accent>-<ypogegrammeni>
Unicode offers precomposed vowel plus macron and breve combinations for the plain vowels α, ι, and υ (ᾱ, ῑ, ῡ) but makes no provision for such vowels with breathings and/or accents. I added here these glyphs with vowel lenght and other diacritics, but in this case it will be necessary to use combining diacritics: not all the fonts are designed for this and not all word processors or page composition apps support combining marks, so be careful!
This layout provide also two additional keys:
-
| written before the correspondig letter produces arcaic greek characters;
-
\ written before a key produces the normal key of keyboard in use.
| mark | key | keyalt |
|---|---|---|
| iota subscript | | | |
| rough breath | ( | |
| smooth breath | ) | |
| acute | / | |
| circumflex | = | |
| diaresis | + | |
| macron | & | |
| breve | ' | |
| middle dot (·) | : | |
| question mark | ; | |
| colon (:) | \: | |
| keraia (ʹ) | AltGr+n | |
| arist. keraia (͵) | AltGr+N | |
| left parenthesis | (( | |
| right parenthesis | )) | |
| left sing. quot. (‘) | [[ | AltGr+V |
| right sing. quot. (’) | ]] | AltGr+B |
| left double quot. (“) | {{ | AltGr+v |
| right double quot. (”) | }} | AltGr+b |
| left doubl. ang. («) | |\ | AltGr+< |
| right doubl. ang. (») | || | AltGr+> |
| character | capital | small |
|---|---|---|
| alpha (α) | A | a |
| beta (β) | B | b |
| gamma (γ) | G | g |
| delta (δ) | D | d |
| epsilon (ε) | E | e |
| zeta (ζ) | Z | z |
| eta (η) | H | h |
| theta (θ) | Q | q |
| iota (ι) | I | i |
| kappa (κ) | K | k |
| lamda (λ) | L | l |
| mu (μ) | M | m |
| nu (ν) | N | n |
| xi (ξ) | C | c |
| omicron (ο) | O | o |
| pi (π) | P | p |
| rho (ρ) | R | r |
| sigma (σ) | S | s |
| final sigma (ς) | j | |
| tau (τ) | T | t |
| upsilon (υ) | U | u |
| phi (φ) | F | f |
| chi (χ) | X | x |
| psi (ψ) | Y | y |
| omega (ω) | W | w |
Archaic letters can be written by typing | before the corresponding letter.
| character | capital | small |
|---|---|---|
| digamma (ϝ) | V | v |
| koppa arc. (ϙ) | |P | |p |
| koppa mod. (ϟ) | |K | |k |
| stigma (ϛ) | |J | |j |
| sampi (ϡ) | |S | |s |
| kappa symbol (ϰ) | |x | nil |
| rho symbol (ϱ) | |r | nil |
| lunate sigma (ϲ) | |c | nil |
Please submit a bug report to suggest glyphs to add or just to report bugs.
Copyright © 2025 Domenico Cufalo
Credits:
- greek-polytonic: Copyright (c) 2018-2019 Johannes Choo
MIT license