Greek symbols and diacritics in Unicode codepages

[irenevlachou]

I was comparing metal type charset (from one Linotype specimen, Greek No2) ¹ to today's keyboard, trying to identify missing and needed glyphs, and the visual changes of these diacritics to Latin.

If we compare metal type character set for Greek–at the time polytonic set– we see this list of symbols(note these are used together with the Latin diacritics):

• semicolon
• guillemet right
• guillemet left
• latin question mark
• greek question mark
• asterisk
• comma
• period
• keraia (low position)
• endash
• emdash
• apostrophe right psili
• apostrophe left dasia

Unicode codepages

Greek Range 0370–03FF:

• U+0374: Greek numeral sign (dexia keraia high position)
• U+0375: Greek lower numeral sign (aristeri keraia lower position)
• U+037E: Greek question mark
• U+0384: Greek tonos
• U+0385: Greek dieresistonos
• U+0387: Greek semicolon (anoteleia)

From these:

• U+0374 -> U+02CA (modifier letter acute accent) = U+02B9(prime) –not the same design–
• U+0375 -> U+02CF(modifier low acute) –not the same design–
• U+037E -> U+003B (semicolon)
• U+0384 -> U+0301 (combining acute accent) –not the same design–
• U+0385 -> U+00A8 (dieresis) U+0301 (combining acute accent) –not the same design–
• U+0387 -> U+00B7 (middle dot) –not the same design–

Greek extended, Range: 1F00–1FFF:

• U+1FBD (greek koronis) -> U+0313 (combining comma above) –not always same design– suggestion by A.Tzallas: "we could use the predefined pairs of psili
• U+0343 (greek combining koronis) ??? Why do we need this
• U+1FC0 (perispomeni) -> U+0342 (combining greek perispomeni) –not always same design–
• U+1FBD (psili) -> U+02BC (modifier apostrophe) =
  U+0313 (combining comma above) –not the same design–
• U+1FEF (varia) -> U+0060 (grave) –not the same design–
• U+1FCD (psili+varia) -> U+1FBF + U+0300 (combining grave) –not the same design–
• U+1FFE (dasia) -> U+02BD (modifier reversed comma) –not the same design–
• U+1FFD (oxia) -> U+00B4 (acute) –not the same design–

Footnotes

1. 11pt has the wrong high quotes ↩

[axtzallas]

On the Linotype specimen:
The typeface is called Greek no. 2 ("newspaper & display fonts" in p. 819 is just a descriptive term)
the symbols that follow number 9 are not 'apostrophe right and left' (not sure what a left apostrophe would be), but lenis and asper (psili and daseia) to be typed before capitals; lenis was also used as an apostrophe; these would also be typed twice as quotation marks (for quotations within quotations)

On Unicode issues:
If koronis needs to be a separate symbol from lenis/psili, then only combining koronis makes sense; koronis is not used stand-alone as an apostrophe, but always over a letter, sometimes in combination with accents; examples μὄδωσε, τοὐλάχιστον, ἐγὦμαι, κἄπειτα. In practice the symbol is not used at all; when a koronis [+accent] + vowel combination is needed, one types the psili + vowel combination.
Then non-combining koronis could be used as Greek apostrophe if its width is not zero.

[axtzallas]

on the "wrong quotes": 10 point Greek no. 2 was cut earlier than the other sizes, and uses Latin single quotation marks as lenis and asper

[irenevlachou]

On Unicode issues: If koronis needs to be a separate symbol from lenis/psili, then only combining koronis makes sense; koronis is not used stand-alone as an apostrophe, but always over a letter, sometimes in combination with accents; examples μὄδωσε, τοὐλάχιστον, ἐγὦμαι, κἄπειτα. In practice the symbol is not used at all; when a koronis [+accent] + vowel combination is needed, one types the psili + vowel combination.

if it was always set on it's own it would make sense to have it as a non-spacing mark, but if it is, even rarely combined with accents, then it couldbt' work

Then non-combining koronis could be used as Greek apostrophe if its width is not zero.

zero width means it seat on top not on the side (before or after a glyph). In any case this would a hack in the sense that we use one glyph to serve as something else.

[axtzallas]

Zero width combining koronis could make sense (if koronisacute, koroniscircumflex etc. are also added to Unicode), but is an unnecessary complication of the system, and would not be used in practice.

Non-combining koronis does not makes sense anyways, so why not rename/repurpose it as a Greek apostrophe?

In practice, I either use psili or koronis (depending on their width in each font), adding spaces/tracking if needed, to replace Latin apostrophes with Greek ones, since there is no Greek apostrophe in Unicode. I guess other graphic designers do the same.