Galilee Odds 'n Ends

This page contains just that, odds and ends and more technical or detailed info regarding the font. It's here to keep the main page less cluttered and shorter/smaller.

Contents of This Page

• Test String
• Sample Page
• Design Considerations
• Key Assignments
• Mac Option Key
• Biblical Language Fonts and Unicode
• Comparison of Galilee, and Other Unicode Fonts
• Font Design Odds 'n Ends

Test String

If you have installed all three faces of the font correctly, you should be able to read Greek characters (the alphabet) on the following lines:

Normal: abgdezhqiklmnxoprsVtufcyw ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW

Bold: abgdezhqiklmnxoprsVtufcyw ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW

Italic: abgdezhqiklmnxoprsVtufcyw ABGDEZHQIKLMNXOPRSTUFCYW

For comparison, the characters should look like this graphic (though in different size and sequence):

[See a sample of all three faces on a separate page.]

Mark 1:4-5, ejgevneto  jIwavnnhV oJ baptivzwn ejn th:/ ejrhvmw/ kai; khruvsswn bavptisma metanoivaV eijV a[fesin aJmartiw:n. kai; ejxeporeuveto pro;V aujto;n pa:sa hJ  jIoudaiva cwvra kai; oiJ  JIerosolumi:tai pavnteV, kai; ejbaptivzonto uJp) aujtou: ejn tw:/  jIordavnh/ potamw:/ ejxomologouvmenoi ta;V aJmartivaV aujtw:n.
(This text looks very poorly spaced in many web browsers, especially on Windows, though it looks quite good in Word [try copying it out and pasting in into Word] and not too bad in FrontPage. The text-rendering engine in the average Windows web browser is apparently not nearly as sophisticated as what is found in a word processor or page layout program. Mac browsers seem to handle this better.)

Sample Page

This sample page is a one-page Adobe Acrobat *v. 5* .pdf file (about 50K) that shows a continuous text passage in Galilee (set 16/20). The text is Mark 1:1-11. (Note: Acrobat v. 4 will not work, you must have v. 5.) This shows only the normal face (v. 1.0).

Design Considerations 

One of the design considerations of the initial Latin keyboard version has been to enable as complete a polytonic koine Greek font as possible using only the lower ASCII characters immediately accessible from the keyboard on a Windows machine without the use of any non-standard-install utilities (e.g., keyboard managers). A few characters have been included in the upper-ASCII range, but they are not characters that are normally needed for koine Greek. You can access them from a word processor using the Insert Symbol command. (Mac users can also use the appropriate option key combinations.) Composite lowercase characters that include accents will eventually be added in Unicode format for display purposes, but text entry is presently too clumsy for normal use by "non-techies." (OpenType may provide a way around the text entry issues in due time; I'm working on both Unicode and OpenType presently with the new v. 4 of FontLab.)

Galilee glyphs are of an orthotic, bicameral design and have similarities to other sans serif Greek faces such as Gill Sans Greek, New Hellenic, and Attika, though it is an original design and not a copy of any of these.

Key Assignments 

The key assignments (which use the old hack of assigning Greek glyphs to Roman character slots) have been designed as follows (partly following the guidelines of Bill Mounce's Standard Font Mapping Initiative: Greek. [Such legacy encodings are being rapidly displaced by a standarized system known as Unicode. You should really learn about this developing standard to which all font work is heading. Galilee is in process of becoming a Unicode font, but it's not quite ready yet.) The alphabetic characters follow what has become a de facto standard (see table below). Accents and diacritics are more difficult, but the following rationale has been employed. The single and double quote keys have not been used to avoid complications from the smart quotes feature of word processors. Since the font is intended for web use, the angle bracket keys < > have likewise been avoided since these characters are used for html code. Since one of the font's initial purposes is for use with WebCT course delivery software and since that program is not particularly font friendly, it was decided to sacrifice these two keys.)

Some accents that overstrike the previous character have some degree of standardization, so acute has been located on the 'v' key, grave on the ';' key, and circumflex on the ':' key. Likewise smooth and rough breathing marks (overstrike) are on 'j' and 'J' respectively and the final sigma is shift 'V'. The composite accents and breathing marks are on the [ ] \ keys (see chart). Punctuation has been kept on equivalent keys where possible (period, comma, question mark). The Greek colon (raised dot) is on the tilde key (largely because there aren't very many other options!). Non-backing accents and breathing marks are on the shifted number keys, along with the diaeresis and combinations.

Click for a larger picture

Mac "Option Key"...

U+2135 ALEF SYMBOL (for MS Gregory 01, Sinaiticus) ℵ
U+1D459 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL L (for "lectionary MS") 𝑙
U+1D516 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR CAPITAL S  "= Septuagint, Greek Old Testament" This is now correct and Unicode 4 approved. 𝔖
U+1D510 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR CAPITAL M (for "majority text") This is now correct and Unicode 4 approved. 𝔐
U+1D513 MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR CAPITAL P (for "papyri"), or U+1D52D for a small letter p. This is now correct and Unicode 4 approved. 𝔓

I had formerly listed: U+1D50A MATHEMATICAL FRAKTUR CAPITAL G (for "Septuagint" per the NA27 text); I need to check this. I had also listed as of 1/7/03) that the TLG Project at U/Calif., Irvine had submitted official proposals to the Unicode consortium for character assignments in a number of areas, including textual criticism. If approved, that will change two items listed above  (majority text, U+214C and Septuagint, U+214D, both Black Letter Capitals) since these assignments will be used in the forthcoming electronic edition of the NA text. These have apparently been revised and the correct Unicode value is as specified above. This note is being left here as a correction/explanation in case someone had referenced them previously.

Gentium: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψω ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ ἂ ἓ ἶ ὁ ὕ ἤ ὠ

Palatino: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψω ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ ἂ ἓ ἶ ὁ ὕ ἤ ὠ

Cardo: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψω ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ ἂ ἓ ἶ ὁ ὕ ἤ ὠ

Galatia SIL: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψω ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ ἂ ἓ ἶ ὁ ὕ ἤ ὠ

Also see David Perry's posting: a PDF file that explains how to add characters in the Supplementary Planes of Unicode to a font using either Volt or FL 4.6.

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