Distinguishing Greek and Greek

[Michael Everson]

At 16:02 +0200 2005-03-16, Panagiotis Sikas wrote:
>I'll try to answer to the best of my knowledge to all these ....
>
>JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
>>Dear Panagiotis,
>>a few questions for my own general understanding:
>>1. how does this affect the Greek as spoken in various other 
>>communities round the world? and the "legal" Greek of Cyprus? If 
>>yes what is the European Community position concerning the 
>>resolution of such differences?
>
>I'm not sure what you mean with "this"??!!

M. Morfin has peculiar and unpopular notions of language and script 
ownership. Pay no mind.

>>3. is there an existing icon traditionally used to indicate a page 
>>in Greek language other than a Greek or Cyprus flag?
>
>haven't seen anything else used....

Apple uses a Greek flag for its monotonic keyboard layout. I use a 
Greek flag with a little Greek temple on it for a polytonic keyboard 
layout, and I use a Greek flag with a little Linear B syllable on it 
for Linear B.

>On the other hand defining just el-polyton is not enough. If 
>el-polyton is defined as a tag, then there is no indication if the 
>text is written in "katharevousa" or "dimotiki". The differences 
>between them are too many, not only orthographycally, but in 
>grammar, in vocabulary and more....
>
>Engaging a grammatical editor for polytonic Greek without knowing in 
>which of the two variants you are working will simply not work.

That might be an argument for additional tags for those grammatical 
variants, if it can be demonstrated that there is a need. 
Orthography, however, can be distinguished by the two tags proposed.
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com