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SophoKeys
SophoKeys
4.0
0.0
SophoKeys free download for Mac

SophoKeys

Version 1.3

Write Ancient Greek on your Mac.

4.0
Based on 3 user ratesRead reviews & comments
Free
Absolutely Free

SophoKeys overview

SophoKeys provides an easy to use and standardized method for writing Ancient Greek on the Mac, taking advantage of the well-known Beta Code of Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Producing platform independent Unicode output, SophoKeys is a perfect tool perfect for the modern publishing world. Creating complex documents is simple, requiring no deadkeys or modifiers except shift -- simply type in Beta Code and watch your properly marked text appear on the screen, with live-updated cues as you type!

Alternatively, SophoKeys also comes with an Express layout, which enables very rapid text entry. Features include all common breathings, accents and other marks available with a single keystroke and vowel deadkeys - type accents after letters! Furthermore, SophoKeys Express allows capital letters to be entered in the simpler shift-letter format.

SophoKeys also comes with a Caps layout which is exactly like the standard layout, but removes the need for asterisk-based capitalization. The Caps layout supports capital letter entry with either the shift or caps-lock key, then allows accents and other marks to be typed afterwards.

Implementation details:

  • Lower and upper case characters
  • All accents
  • All subscripts
  • All breathing marks
  • Macron, breve, and dieresis marks
  • Most archaic characters
  • All punctuation marks
  • All TLG Beta Code quotation marks
  • All TLG Beta Code parentheses
  • 100 TLG Beta Code additional marks
  • 100 TLG Beta Code additional characters

What’s new in version 1.3

Updated on Jan 07 2010

Version 1.3:
  • Updated documentation for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard compatibility

Information

License

Free

Size

146 KB

Developer’s website

http://www.benjaminblonder.org

Downloads

7390

App requirements

  • Intel 32
  • Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later
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  • Comments

  • User Ratings

Guest
Guest
Aug 23 2005
1.2.2
5.0
Aug 23 2005
5.0
Version: 1.2.2
I had to place the bundle file in the "Keyboard Layouts" folder in my computer's Library folder to get it to work. It didn't work in the "Keyboards" folder in my user's Library folder. I'm using Tiger.
Guest
Guest
Jan 20 2005
1.1
5.0
Jan 20 2005
5.0
Version: 1.1
Please let me modify my previous review, with apologies to the author. My impression was that one particular Greek font, which doesn't work particularly well, was installed as part of the SophoKeys installation package, and most of my critical remarks were directed against that font. Now I have learned that these problems have nothing to do with SophoKeys, which seems to be a simple and straightforward keyboard remap that works as advertised.
Tsantsan1
Tsantsan1
Jan 17 2005
1.1
4.0
Jan 17 2005
4.0
Version: 1.1
Why should someone nowadays learn to type polytonic with the betacode conventions instead of using a normal polytonic keyboard? Apart from GreekKeys there are some other ones available in the internet and there are rumors that Tiger will have a polytonic keyboard. BetaCode was good and very useful 20 years ago for writing the huge numbers of ancient greek texts for TLG and Perseus. Of course Benjamin should be congratulated for his effort as this is the first betacode keyboard for the mac and still it may be useful for some people. Keep on the nice work!
Guest
Guest
Jan 16 2005
1.1
5.0
Jan 16 2005
5.0
Version: 1.1
Great way to get a polytonic Greek output and get used to using betacode at the same time! More and more I find that betacode is something that you had better master, but up to now I didn't use it because I wanted to see those Greek characters on my screen. Best of both worlds.
Guest
Guest
Jan 16 2005
1.1
5.0
Jan 16 2005
5.0
Version: 1.1
Thank you for your time creating this.
Bblonder
Bblonder
Jan 15 2005
1.0.1
0.0
Jan 15 2005
0.0
Version: 1.0.1
As the developer of SophoKeys, I would like to make a short response to Professor Sutton's misguided comments. My product is -not- a font. SophoKeys is a keyboard layout for Mac OS X. It intercepts virtual keystrokes (the codes produced by the depression of a key on a keyboard) and changes them into Unicode characters. The standard U.S. keyboard layout produces an 'a' when one presses the 'a' key on a U.S. keyboard, whereas SophoKeys instead maps that event to the Unicode character for a Greek alpha, unless other specific keys are afterwards pressed to produce accent marks. Once that alpha character is drawn, the user is free to format it with whatever font he or she chooses, so long as it contains the proper Unicode glyph. Moreover, SophoKeys does not ship with any extra fonts, with serifs or otherwise. It simply produces Unicode output which can then be formatted however the user chooses. If GreekKeys did not ship with additional fonts, it would do precisely same thing. Regarding the criticism that SophoKeys does not support Roman characters: if Professor Sutton is suggesting that one cannot type them with SophoKeys enabled, he is correct. With GreekKeys it is similarly impossible, as the entire keyboard is remapped to produce Greek output. Fortunately Apple provides an easy way to switch back to the standard layout, by either selecting it in the Input menu or by pressing a simpley keystroke (default layout cycling is accomplished with cmd-opt-space). This makes it easy to produce documents with both Greek and Roman characters - the screenshot available on the SophoKeys website is proof enough of that. If instead he means that SophoKeys does not have any Roman characters, this is also true - but truly, SophoKeys has none, as it is not a font at all! SophoKeys is not GreekKeys, and of course provides a different keyboard mapping. For a user accustomed to writing Beta Code, SophoKeys is actually quite standard and provides an easy way to produce beautiful output from a well-known input method. For those new to Greek input on the Macintosh, I would even hazard to say that SophoKeys is an easier system to memorize than that which GreekKeys provides.
Dana-Sutton
Dana-Sutton
Jan 15 2005
1.0.1
3.0
Jan 15 2005
3.0
Version: 1.0.1
This is a good-looking font, and Mac-using classicists have an urgent need for a serifed polytonic font that has genuine boldface and italic styles (Lucida Grande does not, and so displays incorrectly on some browsers, including Safari) and contains that Extended Greek range of glyphs. We have to beg, borrow, or steal a copy of Palatino Linotype from our Windows-using friends, and that is not a particularly handsome font. BUT those of use who type polytonic Greek are used to the standard Greek Keys Unicode keyboard remap, distributed with the approval of the American Philological Association, and I doubt many people who would otherwise use this font are interested in learning an oddball keyboard layout. Even worse, this appears to be a font that has the Extended Greek range of glyphs only, not a full Roman and Greek combination, so it might be of use for a word processor, it certainly won't be for preparing Greek (or Roman pages with some Greek embedded) for the Web, which is where Unicode really comes into its own. In fact, it's even goofier than I'm saying: using the handy Unicode Font Info utility, I can't figure out where the heck this font keeps its glyphs, I can't get them to show up in any panel I'd expect to find them. By now there is plenty of standardization in polytonic font architecture, and any new font ought to observe these conventions.
schmelding
schmelding
Jan 12 2005
1.0
0.0
Jan 12 2005
0.0
Version: 1.0
Looks cool...but it's all Greek to me. Lame, I know. But I couldn't resist.
Guest
Guest
Jan 12 2005
1.0
5.0
Jan 12 2005
5.0
Version: 1.0
Excellent! Exceptionally useful for simplifying the typing of Ancient Greek. A great imporvement against diving into the character palette each time you need a breathing!
Guest
Guest
Aug 23 2005
5.0
Aug 23 2005
5.0
Version: null
Tsantsan1
Tsantsan1
Jan 17 2005
4.0
Jan 17 2005
4.0
Version: null
Dana-Sutton
Dana-Sutton
Jan 15 2005
3.0
Jan 15 2005
3.0
Version: null