Typing in Greek

users
#1

LibreOffice 3.5.7.2 on Xubuntu 12.04.

I'm trying set up a paragraph style, and maybe a text style, to type in
Greek on my normally American English computer. I only need this for
homework in the Ancient Greek class I am taking.

I have installed openoffice.org-l10n.el and libreoffice-l10n.el (they
came together) and restarted LO, but that hasn't helped.

I cloned my Default paragraph style, naming the clone "Default - Greek"
and then modified Default-Greek to change the language settings under
the Font tab to Ancient Greek. After applying this style to a paragraph
all typing in that paragraph ought to come out in Greek letters, right?
Well, I still get just English. And the style is definitely applied; it
says so in the formatting toolbar. And the font (Junicode) definitely
has a full set of Greek glyphs, properly encoded.

What have I missed?

#2

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives some guidance

Best,
Joel

#3

John Jason Jordan wrote:

What have I missed?

Have you enabled a Greek keyboard? I have configured mine for U.S.
English, International English and Greek. So I can easily switch layouts
to type stuff like ³¤€óÓæςερτδωδσ© and more.

#4

On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:53:16 -0700
Joel Madero <jmadero.dev@gmail.com> dijo:

What have I missed?

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should
have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives
some guidance

Thanks to you and James for the suggestions, but it's still not working.

Note that I am using Xubuntu, not Ubuntu. Gnome is not installed,
except for those components that Xfce uses, or perhaps required by some
application.

I found Language Support under Applications > Settings. It pops up a
little window with a list of languages. English (United States), and
under it English are both in black text. Immediately under them is what
appears to be Greek, transliterated: "Elleniká," but it's grayed out and
cannot be selected.

There is a button for Install/Remove Languages. It shows both English
and Modern Greek with a check box in them after I used the GUI to
install the Modern Greek (no Ancient or Classical Greek option, but
Modern Greek is probably close enough for now). I also logged out and
back in again, but the GUI still shows Elleniká grayed out. The input
method was set to None, so I changed it to Ibus, and again I logged out
and back in, but still no joy.

#5

Can you use greek in any other application. May be get that working system wide and then see about getting it working in LO.
Steve

#6

On Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:07:37 +1300
Steve Edmonds <steve.edmonds@ptglobal.com> dijo:

Joel Madero <jmadero.dev@gmail.com> dijo:

What have I missed?

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus
(should have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link
gives some guidance

Thanks to you and James for the suggestions, but it's still not
working.

Note that I am using Xubuntu, not Ubuntu. Gnome is not installed,
except for those components that Xfce uses, or perhaps required by
some application.

I found Language Support under Applications > Settings. It pops up a
little window with a list of languages. English (United States), and
under it English are both in black text. Immediately under them is
what appears to be Greek, transliterated: "Elleniká," but it's
grayed out and cannot be selected.

There is a button for Install/Remove Languages. It shows both English
and Modern Greek with a check box in them after I used the GUI to
install the Modern Greek (no Ancient or Classical Greek option, but
Modern Greek is probably close enough for now). I also logged out and
back in again, but the GUI still shows Elleniká grayed out. The input
method was set to None, so I changed it to Ibus, and again I logged
out and back in, but still no joy.

Can you use greek in any other application. May be get that working
system wide and then see about getting it working in LO.

No, I cannot type in Greek in any application, unless I use "insert
character" or use Ctrl-Shift-u +Unicode value. This is a real pain.

I also asked on the Xfce forums last night. I just checked the post -
15 people had read it and there were no replies.

A long time ago when I used Gnome it was trivially easy. But how in the
heck do you install a second keyboard in Xfce?

#7

On Tue, 1 Oct 2013 20:11:21 -0700
John Jason Jordan <johnxj@comcast.net> dijo:

A long time ago when I used Gnome it was trivially easy. But how in the
heck do you install a second keyboard in Xfce?

I finally found the answer here:

http://tinyurl.com/pt7l4w2

This sets up an icon (or text) in the Xfce panel. You can switch
input languages by clicking on the icon/text, or you can assign a
hotkey shortcut to switch languages.

Having done that I can now enter Greek in a LO Writer document, or any
other application on the computer. I assigned a shortcut so that I can
switch back and forth between US English and Greek as I'm typing.

At first I was perplexed because some of the keys seemed to give me the
Greek glyphs that sound similar to the English letters, e.g., t gives
me a tau, but the s only gave me upper- and regular lowercase sigma, not
the word-ending sigma. Later I found an image of a real Greek keyboard
and discovered that the word-ending sigma is the w key. I need to print
myself a picture of a real Greek keyboard and post it above my monitor
for reference until I get the hang of touch typing in Greek.

#8

if there is an itrans version then you just type like English and it translates it to the equivalent sound in Greek. I use this for Telugu and it's pretty amazing.

Best,
Joel

#9

On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 21:44:51 -0700
Joel Madero <jmadero.dev@gmail.com> dijo:

At first I was perplexed because some of the keys seemed to give me
the Greek glyphs that sound similar to the English letters, e.g., t
gives me a tau, but the s only gave me upper- and regular lowercase
sigma, not the word-ending sigma. Later I found an image of a real
Greek keyboard and discovered that the word-ending sigma is the w
key. I need to print myself a picture of a real Greek keyboard and
post it above my monitor for reference until I get the hang of touch
typing in Greek.

if there is an itrans version then you just type like English and it
translates it to the equivalent sound in Greek. I use this for Telugu
and it's pretty amazing.

I don't know if there is an itrans version or not, but I can't imagine
that it would work anyway. The Greek letter sigma is more or less
equivalent to English s, but there are two lowercase glyphs, one used
in the middle of the word and the other only at the end of a word. How
would a keyboard based on sound know whether I was at the end of the
word or not?

Then there are the aspirated consonants phi, theta and chi. There are
no equivalent letters for those sounds in English.

But for the most part the keyboard is similar to the English as far as
sound is concerned. It won't be that bad learning how to type Greek on
a US English keyboard.

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
You might find more people that are familiar with this on the international translators list
L10n@Global.LibreOffice.Org
or on the Greek mailing list.  My guess is that when you first type in the letter it appears as it would be in the middle of a word but then if you press space afterwards it changes to the way it should be at the end of a word.  On the other hand maybe there are 2 keys for it?

The iTrans thing sounds a lot like the standard way of typing in Japanese because it's extremely difficult to get a keyboard that shows Japanese characters even in Japan.  Personally i think it sounds like a nightmare but plenty of people seem to have become familiar with typing like that.  
Regards from 
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:53:16 -0700
Joel Madero <jmadero.dev@gmail.com> dijo:

What have I missed?

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should
have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives
some guidance

Thanks to you and James for the suggestions, but it's still not working.

Note that I am using Xubuntu, not Ubuntu. Gnome is not installed,
except for those components that Xfce uses, or perhaps required by some
application.

I found Language Support under Applications > Settings. It pops up a
little window with a list of languages. English (United States), and
under it English are both in black text. Immediately under them is what
appears to be Greek, transliterated: "Elleniká," but it's grayed out and
cannot be selected.

There is a button for Install/Remove Languages. It shows both English
and Modern Greek with a check box in them after I used the GUI to
install the Modern Greek (no Ancient or Classical Greek option, but
Modern Greek is probably close enough for now). I also logged out and
back in again, but the GUI still shows Elleniká grayed out. The input
method was set to None, so I changed it to Ibus, and again I logged out
and back in, but still no joy.

#12

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives some guidance

Best,
Joel

#13

John Jason Jordan wrote:

What have I missed?

Have you enabled a Greek keyboard? I have configured mine for U.S.
English, International English and Greek. So I can easily switch layouts
to type stuff like ³¤€óÓæςερτδωδσ© and more.

#14

On Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:53:16 -0700
Joel Madero <jmadero.dev@gmail.com> dijo:

What have I missed?

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should
have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives
some guidance

Thanks to you and James for the suggestions, but it's still not working.

Note that I am using Xubuntu, not Ubuntu. Gnome is not installed,
except for those components that Xfce uses, or perhaps required by some
application.

I found Language Support under Applications > Settings. It pops up a
little window with a list of languages. English (United States), and
under it English are both in black text. Immediately under them is what
appears to be Greek, transliterated: "Elleniká," but it's grayed out and
cannot be selected.

There is a button for Install/Remove Languages. It shows both English
and Modern Greek with a check box in them after I used the GUI to
install the Modern Greek (no Ancient or Classical Greek option, but
Modern Greek is probably close enough for now). I also logged out and
back in again, but the GUI still shows Elleniká grayed out. The input
method was set to None, so I changed it to Ibus, and again I logged out
and back in, but still no joy.

#15

http://superuser.com/questions/28932/how-do-i-input-greek-characters-in-ubuntu

You need to install the language and then change it with ibus (should have a little keyboard icon in your taskbar somewhere).

Google around for "xubuntu install language" but the above link gives some guidance

Best,
Joel

#16

John Jason Jordan wrote:

What have I missed?

Have you enabled a Greek keyboard? I have configured mine for U.S.
English, International English and Greek. So I can easily switch layouts
to type stuff like ³¤€óÓæςερτδωδσ© and more.