Andrew Hamilton's Homepage
Netscape does not recognize Greek characters by default under Unix or Mac, but it is straightforward to get it to do so, without using GIFs. The table below offers a number of options, and there are others. One other option is to do it the way the Greeks do, but I'm assuming you'd rather stick with the Latin1 (ISO8859-1) character set than switch to Greek (ISO8859-7).
Sadly, the fact that your browser can recognize Greek does not mean that the rest of the world's browser can. If it is essential that the world see your Greek, then you must use GIFs, such as those created by the latex2html utility, at least until HTML 4.0 and/or MathML become a widespread reality. Amongst the disadvantages of GIFs: (1) unlike normal fonts, they cannot be rescaled dynamically by the user, (2) Netscape and Internet Explorer have arranged it so that it is impossible to align GIFs correctly simultaneously for both browsers, at least for letters with descenders, such as g.
An alternative technology for rendering fonts is to use dynamic fonts, but (1) these fonts do not include Greek, (2) they render much more slowly than native bitmapped fonts, (3) they are not supported on Macs, (4) at least on my machine (Netscape 4.0 on a Linux box) they work only in part.
To write Greek p in HTML for the benefit of folks whose browsers can see Greek, use some or all of <font face="math1,symbol,Ismini,Athenian,Attika,Kadmos,Sparta,Sgreek">p</font>.
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If oikoV
(<font face="symbol">oikoV</font>)
looks Greek to you,
then your browser recognizes a symbol font.
If not, then:
For mathematicians, this is the simplest way to see Greek. | |
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Mathematicians know that variables,
like a, should be written in italics,
and variables written in Greek are no exception.
The symbol font above may or may not show up in italics in your browser.
Does oikoV (<font face="math1">oikoV</font>) look Greek to you, and italicky to boot? If so, it's a good chance that (at least on Unix running X):
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The ancient Greek word for home
rises not from the depths of my classical education,
but from one of the
Greek dictionaries on the web,
specifically the
Greek dictionary
provided by the
Perseus Project.
Apparently the ancient Greek word for home
should properly be written with accents.
On Unix running X, does oµkoq (<font face="Ismini">oµkoq</font>) look Greek to you, with accents? To make it so:
By the way, where did the µ in oµkoq above come from? Strangely enough, it's part of the Latin1 character set, the only Greek letter therein. If you have a compose key on your computer, then typing the three key sequence ``<Compose> / u'' (or ``<Compose> m u'' or something like that) should give you a µ. If you don't have a compose key, then µn; (including the semicolon) yields µ in HTML. Here is the complete Latin1 (ISO8859-1) character set. The Ismini font is scaleable, not bitmapped. To allow the Ismini font to change size under Netscape, you have to go into the Edit Preferences - Fonts box, click on the Ismini font, and turn on Allow Scaling. Sadly, Netscape does not remember font preferences across sessions, so you have to turn on Allow Scaling for scaleable fonts every time you start Netscape. If you know how to persuade Netscape to remember that scaleable fonts are scaleable, email me. | |
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On Mac or Windows,
does oäkow
(<font face="Athenian,Attika,Kadmos,Sparta,Sgreek">oäkow</font>)
look Greek to you, with accents?
To make it so:
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Does οικος
(οικος)
or οικος
(οικος)
look Greek to you?
Then
HTML 4.0
has arrived,
with potential access to zillions of
characters,
as long as you have the appropriate fonts loaded on your machine.
You may be able to get this to show up in Greek by choosing the Unicode (UTF-8) encoding option on your browser, in place of Latin1 (ISO8859-1). |
Updated 24 July 1998