how to type in Greek Unicode on a recently made PC or Mac

in Windows XP (to determine the system version on your PC go from the Start menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information)

1. in the Start menu click Control Panel

2a. (in Classic View) select Regional and Language Options

2b. (in Category View) select Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options then select Regional and Language Options

3. in the new window that appears select Languages tab

4. under Text services and input languages click Details…

5. under Installed services click Add…

6. in the new Add input language window under Input language select Greek

7. under Keyboard layout/IME select Greek Polytonic

8. in Preferences section customize Language Bar... as you would like to see it

9. in Text Services window click Apply

10. open up Notepad or Word

11. select EL in the Language Bar or bottom right hand corner of the Start menu bar to type Greek

12. select EN to type in English again

in Mac OS X.4 (to determine the system version on your Mac click on the little Apple icon in the upper left hand corner of the desktop and select About This Mac—nb the exact steps listed below cannot be followed on any Mac system earlier than X.4, though you will find support for Unicode in earlier versions of OS X; systems OS 9 and earlier cannot do Unicode)

1. go to System Preferences (usually next to the smiley blue Finder icon in your Dock)

2. click International

3. click Input Menu

4. scroll down to the flag icon Greek Polytonic and tick the box next to it

5. underneath this in the Input menu shortcuts box you may want to create an easy way to go from one language to another via a keystroke combination

6. underneath this box in the Input source options box ensure that the button is selected for Allow a different input source for each document

7. underneath this box tick the box Show input menu in menu bar

8. a little national flag should appear in the upper right hand corner of your desktop—click this flag to select your language

9. open up TextEdit or Word (must be no older than Word 2004) and type in whatever language you want, according to the flag icon visible in the menu bar

 

Notes

• this method means that you do not have to choose a different font to go from English to Greek—you now use the same font for both, you simply change the "keyboard input method"

• experiment with different fonts: Arial and Times New Roman in Greek are quite different but both look good on a Mac, for instance

• you need not buy or download anything at all if you are happy with these methods and results—all the software needed is now included in XP and OS X.4

• you can however buy specialist Unicode Greek fonts or download them for free online: do a Google and see what comes up

• you can also buy or download specialist keyboards or "keyboard layouts" that will offer a wide variety of different things: do a Google and see what comes up

• diacritical marks etc are possible with the methods listed above but ensuring that a given recipient of your file will be able to see your diacriticals remains difficult; this is also the case with the proprietary fonts and keyboards

• any recipient in fact should be told that you are using Unicode—they may need to adjust settings on their own computer or software in order to see your Greek Unicode—most new software features some kind of "text encoding" setting: be sure this is set to Unicode