# How can I enter Greek characters?



## perispomenon

Hello all,

I have been trying to type Greek characters in my first post, but (as you probably noticed) they only showed up as question marks.

I use a Mac, a unicode font and a keyboard layout called Sophokeys to type Greek. What do you use to get Greek displayed on this forum?

Thanks!


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## anthodocheio

Hello Perispomenon,

Have a look here and try following the links. It mustn't be hard..

Good luck!


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## Probo

Hello. You have a very good program in the web of the University of Barcelona, called "Euclides grec politonic". Search in Google. Bye.


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## perispomenon

anthodocheio said:


> try following the links. It mustn't be hard..



Hi Anthodocheio. That link actually refers me to the Sophokeys site. That's what I actually use already. But somehow I can't get it to work here. So I was wondering whether I would have to adjust text encodings somewhere, a different font?

Here's something typed with Sophokeys:

ÎµÎ½Î´ÎµÎºÎ±

The preview shows me question marks.


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## perispomenon

Aha, wait, I just adjusted the text encoding from 'default' to 'Unicode' and now it works ok.


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## anthodocheio

Well, I don't know. I have windows XP...


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## anthodocheio

perispomenon said:


> Aha, wait, I just adjusted the text encoding from 'default' to 'Unicode' and now it works ok.


 
Yes! With 'unicode' I can see you wrote "ένδεκα".


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## wonderment

Hi. I think I have similar problems as I also use a Mac. I can't see that you've typed "endeka"; it looks gibberish. I can type Greek letters using the Greek polytonic keyboard, but the problem is I can't seem to type both Greek and Roman letters at once. Well, actually, I can, but when I try to post the message it comes out in Roman letters with question marks for the Greek. Please let me know if you figure out how to get around this problem. I've gotten around it by posting the message first in Roman letters, then editing the question marks using the Greek polytonic keys, but it's a pain. Thanks!


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## perispomenon

I haven't quite figured it out yet: the encoding of the site always reverts back to Western (ISO Latin 1), no matter what I do. And my Greek characters only show up when I switch the encoding to Unicode.

Strangely enough, the Greek entered by Anthodocheio is legible in either text encoding.

I will investigate further ...


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## wonderment

Perispomenon, I think I may know where the problem is. With the Mac, we have the option of many keyboards (in System Preferences, under Input Menu in the International option). I've set mine to US Extended and Greek Polytonic so that I can type in both alphabets, and both are Unicode. Before I had just US (Roman) instead of US Extended (Unicode). And I noticed that the Dutch keyboard is Roman, and it doesn't look like you have a Unicode option (at least not on my Mac). Maybe that's why, for you, the encoding always reverts to Western (Roman)?

ενδεκα  ten


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## skoros

I have a Mac as well. I have OSX and I set it up like this:
Go to Apple>System Preferences>International>Input Menu

Make sure Keyboard Viewer option is checked. Scroll down the list and check all keyboard layouts you want to use. Make sure you check 'Use one input source in all documents' and 'Show input menu in menu bar' in the options located underneath the list of languages.

After you do this you will see a little flag icon appear in the right corner of your menu bar (by your clock). When you click on this flag icon a drop-down menu will pop up and from there you can select keyboard layout of any language  you checked in  the Input Menu window by simply clicking on the appropriate flag. Clicking on the  'Show Keyboard Viewer' option in the same drop-down menu will actually show you the keyboard layout on the screen. 

I hope that helps.


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## perispomenon

wonderment said:


> Perispomenon, I think I may know where the problem is. With the Mac, we have the option of many keyboards (in System Preferences, under Input Menu in the International option). I've set mine to US Extended and Greek Polytonic so that I can type in both alphabets, and both are Unicode. Before I had just US (Roman) instead of US Extended (Unicode). And I noticed that the Dutch keyboard is Roman, and it doesn't look like you have a Unicode option (at least not on my Mac). Maybe that's why, for you, the encoding always reverts to Western (Roman)?
> 
> ??????  ten



Hi Wonderment. That could be the cause, I will do some testing with it. But the strange thing is, that on another forum (for ancient Greek), I use the same settings and there I have no problems at all.


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## MarcB

Here is a virtual Greek keyboard http://www.gate2home.com/?language=el&sec=2


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## paul bela

Hello, I have been trying for a long time to find the way to write using greek fonts and finally with the recommendations of Skoros  on the forum I was able to do so. It was simple to fix my problem, I had only to check the polytonic greek to  get it to work. Before when I set up my I-Mac, I had checked the "greek keyboard" and now adding the "greek polytonic" version was my solution.Ευχαριστω πολη. Paul


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