Edward C. D. Hopkins scripsit:

> If I am typing a Greek inscription, how do I decide whether to use U+03DE
> GREEK LETTER KOPPA or U+03D8 GREEK LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA? Aren't these the
> same letter with a difference only in artistic rendering? Unicode does not
> use the "symbol" connotation in this case. Why give two artistic forms of
> the same letter?

I can't speak to the lunate sigma, but this one is straightforward. If
you are using koppa as a number, or to index a list, or the like, then
use U+03DE. If you are using it to transcribe an archaic inscription
that contains it, then use U+03D8.

--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan ***@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
--_The Hobbit_


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Joop,

Since Koppa has the same modern meaning as the ancient character (letter
Koppa and 90), this runs contrary to my understanding of the Unicode
philosophy, as I understand it. Is there an established Unicode Greek
sorting algorithm?

I can see no reason to have lunate Sigma U+03F9 as a separate codepoint in a
font. Unless convincing information is received, I think I'll include a
lunate Sigma only as an alternate glyph to the "true" capital Greek Sigma,
U+03A3. This should preclude sorting and search problems.

Many thanks,

Chris Hopkins


----- Original Message -----
From: "Joop Jagers" <***@chello.nl>
>
> First the koppas. The ancient Greek form is the lollipop koppa. This is an
> alphabetic character comparable with Latin q. It also has a numeric value,
90.
> The lightning koppa is used in modern Greek as a numeral only (=90).
>
> You're right: C-shaped sigma is *not* a symbol, but a stilistic variation
of a
> regular sigma, and so there's no reason to include it in Unicode. Unicode
4.0
> even adds the capital form. It's mainly used when editors don't want to
> differentiate between final sigma and normal sigma. Those who'd like to
use
> c-shaped sigmas should bear in mind that it has a different encoding which
makes
> searching difficult.




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Edward C. D. Hopkins wrote:

> When typing a lunate Sigma in a Greek inscription, I can chose either U+03A3
> GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA or U+03F9 GREEK CAPITAL LUNATE SIGMA SYMBOL
> (listed in UC 4.0 beta as an "archaic letter"). Visit my chart at
> http://parthia.com/fonts/glyphchart.htm to see nine variants of Sigma used
> in numismatic inscriptions, only one of which is lunate Sigma. More glyph
> forms are found in non-numismatic inscriptions. Since there is no apparent
> difference in meaning, but only a difference in the artistic style of the
> glyph, does the "symbol" connotation somehow explain why two letters with
> the same meaning have been placed in Unicode?

There is a gripe (incorrect) about Unicode's failure to recognize either
uppercase or lowercase lunate sigma here:
http://m17n.org/cgreek/archive/20000906/127.html.

There is an explanation of uses of lunate and non-lunate sigma and doubt
whether Unicode should or should not recognize both at
http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/boston99.pdf. Search for "lunate".

For the actual proposal request for capital lunate sigma see
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/final/lunate which gives the original proposal
requesting capital lunate sigma.

In short, there was enough desire and "need" for both forms that Unicode
now provides them.

People may use either or both as desired.


Jim Allan





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> Since Koppa has the same modern meaning as the ancient character (letter
> Koppa and 90), this runs contrary to my understanding of the Unicode
> philosophy, as I understand it.

The point Joop was making is that in *modern* Greek usage a
distinction is made, where the "lightning koppa" appears as a numeral
for numbering of legal clauses, or the like, but where the "lollipop
koppa" is the modern rendition of the archaic koppa (which, of course,
also had a numeric value). It is *this* distinction which led to
the separate encoding, not a failure to recognize that ultimately
all the koppas were, in some sense, the "same letter".

> Is there an established Unicode Greek
> sorting algorithm?

See the table for the Unicode Collation Algorithm, UTS #10.
It isn't an "established Unicode Greek sorting algorithm" per se,
but it does provide a default ordering for all Greek characters,
along with all other Unicode characters. Archaic koppa isn't
dealt with yet in that table, since it is a recent addition
to Unicode.

>
> I can see no reason to have lunate Sigma U+03F9 as a separate codepoint in a
> font. Unless convincing information is received, I think I'll include a
> lunate Sigma only as an alternate glyph to the "true" capital Greek Sigma,
> U+03A3. This should preclude sorting and search problems.

Probably a good idea.

Note that the lunate sigma was encoded also for *modern* reasons.
It is distinguished in modern typography, as Joop indicates.
And while it can create problems for sorting and searching,
there already is such a problem in modern Greek (or modern
Greek representations of Classical or Ancient Greek) because
of the sigma and final sigma -- both of which are also just
the "same letter". This is *already* handled in the Unicode
Collation Algorithm by giving all three flavors of sigma the
same primary weights:

03C3 ; [.0CA6.0020.0002.03C3] # GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA
03F2 ; [.0CA6.0020.0004.03F2] # GREEK LUNATE SIGMA SYMBOL; QQK
03C2 ; [.0CA6.0020.0019.03C2] # GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA; QQK
^^^^ ^^^^
primary tertiary

The differences in the weights are at the tertiary level, which
results in same sorting together with same, and these letters
only being distinguished the way that capital versus small
letters are distinguished.

Your problem, as a Classical numismatics specialist, (and the
same applies in general to paleographers and papyriologists)
is that you confront many *more* glyphs for the various
characters than just the very few distinctions that got
encoded as distinct forms in the Unicode Standard for one
modern reason or another. The eventual result is not going
to be the encoding of each distinct glyph of each distinct
letter as another character in Unicode. Instead, as you
are doing, you need to lay out a subsidiary variant space
which you can map to specialized fonts, and associate all
of those variants with the Greek alphabet (in your case) or
whatever base set of characters might apply in other
paleographic traditions.

--Ken

>
> Many thanks,
>
> Chris Hopkins
>
>



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I mangled the link I provided to the proposal request to add capital
lunate sigma to Unicode.

The full link is http://www.tlg.uci.edu/final/lunate.pdf.

Sorry

Jim Allan



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Edward C.J. Hopkins wrote:

> Since Koppa has the same modern meaning as the ancient character (letter
> Koppa and 90), this runs contrary to my understanding of the Unicode
> philosophy, as I understand it.

A full discussion of modern Z-shaped koppa and archaic Q-shaped koppa
appears at http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf.

The logic is that the Z-shaped form has diverged to the point that it is
no longer generally recognized by modern Greeks as a koppa, just a number.

Q-shaped koppa would seem wrong for numeric use, Z-shapped koppa would
seem wrong used to represent the ancient symbol in inscriptions, and
accordingly the two forms do have different meanings in modern usage.

Jim Allan



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At 15:32 -0400 2003-04-07, Edward C. D. Hopkins wrote:

>If I am typing a Greek inscription, how do I decide whether to use U+03DE
>GREEK LETTER KOPPA or U+03D8 GREEK LETTER ARCHAIC KOPPA? Aren't these the
>same letter with a difference only in artistic rendering? Unicode does not
>use the "symbol" connotation in this case. Why give two artistic forms of
>the same letter?

Because they are not the same. See
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com


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Michael Everson wrote (in http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf,
page 7):

"The Missing Link [...] An example of this can be seen in Derolez's
1954 [...] a transitional KOPPA (called COFE here) for 90 (LXXXX), and SAMPI
(called ENNACOSE here) for 900 (DCCCC). Note that ?? GOTHIC LETTER NINETY
[...] [is] based on the same graphemic model [...]"

Another example of this "transitional" koppa glyph is Cyrillic letter "?"
("che", U+0427 & U+0447).

Not surprisingly, the numeric value of "?" is 90, which shows that its
original position in the alphabet must have been between "?" ("pe", numeric
value = 80) and "?" ("er", numeric value = 100).

_ Marco


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Thanks, Michael. All is clear now. I have modified my font map to remove the
modern numeric koppa.

Chris Hopkins

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Everson" <***@evertype.com>

> In ancient inscriptions, only the Q-koppa can be used. The
> Sigmoid-koppa is a later innovation. See my document as suggested.



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Jim, this explains the history and I'll just have to adapt to the Greek
codepoints that have been created. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Chris Hopkins

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Allan" <***@smrtytrek.com>
>
> There is a gripe (incorrect) about Unicode's failure to recognize either
> uppercase or lowercase lunate sigma here:
> http://m17n.org/cgreek/archive/20000906/127.html.
>
> There is an explanation of uses of lunate and non-lunate sigma and doubt
> whether Unicode should or should not recognize both at
> http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/boston99.pdf. Search for "lunate".
>
> For the actual proposal request for capital lunate sigma see
> http://www.tlg.uci.edu/final/lunate which gives the original proposal
> requesting capital lunate sigma.
>
> In short, there was enough desire and "need" for both forms that Unicode
> now provides them.
>
> People may use either or both as desired.



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Chris Hopkins asked:

> Many thanks for the explanation. So by mapping the archaic forms of a Greek
> letter to the basic Unicode Greek codepoint, the sorting will be correct. I
> think I see how this works for Variation Selectors (which must be officially
> approved), but I don't see how it could work if using things I control, say,
> OpenType unmapped glyphs with <aalt> or <salt> entries. Can these be sorted?

They can, but you'd have to do some preprocessing and possibly some
tailoring.

Effectively, you preprocess your OpenType unmapped glyphs through
a filter to some character value. For example, if you were
representing a square-theta-with-a-dot as an OpenType unmapped
glyph, you could either filter that to convert it to a theta
for sorting (in which case you wouldn't need tailoring for
the collation table), or filter it to a private use code
point, or to a theta plus a private use code point representing
your own scheme for tracking variants. In the latter two cases,
you'd need access to an implementation of Unicode collation
which would allow you to tailor your table to incorporate
your use of private use code points, appropriately. The
ICU library implementation, for example, gives you a Unicode collation
algorithm implementation and also has a public mechanism for
tailoring, so with that you could accomplish what you need
to do.

--Ken



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This is way too late, and Ken's already pretty much addressed it, but I
thought I might as well chime in.

Clearly the inventory of codepoints in Unicode is intended to be emic,
so the diversity of glyph variants of antiquity are not proper to it.
Where some typographical tradition does make a consistent
differentiation between two glyphs, though, they are candidates for
separate codepoints.

While normal sigma and lunate sigma are indeed mere glyph variants in
most contexts --- the lunate being early mediaeval, and not much seen
in modern typography --- there is a context where it is used routinely:
editions of old texts where the editor is being deliberately agnostic
about whether the sigma is final or not. Often, the editor merely
carries that through as a stylistic choice to the rest of the text; but
given that in antiquity text was written without spaces, there is a
semantic loading to the choice of non-final and final sigma which the
lunate obviates. (e.g. if you're publishing a papyrus, you often put on
facing pages what the papyrus actually has --- with lunates, since the
papyrus give no indication of word breaks, so it would be presumptuous
to put in medials and finals --- and what you think it says --- again
with lunates, so that the two facing pages look consistent, if nothing
else.) So the lunate sigma is distinct in modern practice and necessary.

The lunate capital becomes necessary for completeness and consistency
(all-caps rendering of ancient texts, say). It might be possible to
insist that those editors using lunate capital in title case are merely
using an affectation, and that lunate should be the same codepoint as
the capital normal sigma. But I think that makes matters much more
complicated than they need be.

As I describe on http://www.opoudjis.net/dist/sigma.html , while there
are cases in typographical traditions where the form of sigma used is
not predictable (medial word-finally, final word-medially), they are
almost all deviant and rare enough that they can be ignored. So in most
cases, even the medial/final distinction is unnecessary (just as the
medial/final beta distinction would be --- if anyone still observed
it...) The one exception is abbreviation, because period is
semantically overloaded.

This is not to say that all that has been included in Unicode has been
included well; Haralambous in his '99 paper doubts that mathematicians
could use upsilon-hook or cursive kappa with semantic differentiation
from their normal forms, and I doubt it too. But that's clearly a
legacy issue now, and nothing much can be done about it, even if the
variants end up not being used distinctly by mathematicians.

The story with the koppa is that the lightning-bolt koppa is used in
Modern Greek as a numeral not only in legislation, but pretty much
anywhere English would use a Roman numeral -- notably in page numbering
of introductions, and enumeration of points. So the context one would
likeliest find both numeric and q-like koppa would be a Modern Greek
scholarly work on Archaic Greek inscriptions. Not extremely frequent,
but it can happen. And it is true that most Greeks would have no idea
that the lightning-bolt koppa is the same character as the q-like
koppa, since outside of at most a mumbled sentence in the Classical
stream at high school, most will have never seen a q-like koppa at all.

Thanks to everyone for saying all this before me. :-)

--
Life Dr Nick Nicholas, Dept of French & Italian Studies
Is a knife University of Melbourne, Australia
Whose wife ***@unimelb.edu.au
Is a scythe http://www.opoudjis.net
--- Zoe Velonis, Aged 14 1/2.



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Regarding the versions of Koppa, at least when it means '90', I would just
like to add that in Uncial Byzantine MSS ca 8th/9th cent., for example,
the koppa looks just like the "cofe" on p.7 of
http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf. These MSS contain
astronomical tables (Ptolemy's Handy Tables) where the character is of
course very frequent. In these koppa is indeed the same as the Cyrillic
U+0427 & U+0447, but not much like U+3DE, or the Cyrillic 'koppa' U+480.
One wonders what is best for an edition, especially since all the other the
uncial letters will be represented as lower case.

Raymond Mercier


At 12:15 08/04/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>
>Michael Everson wrote (in http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1938.pdf,
>page 7):
>
> "The Missing Link [...] An example of this can be seen in Derolez's
>1954 [...] a transitional KOPPA (called COFE here) for 90 (LXXXX), and SAMPI
>(called ENNACOSE here) for 900 (DCCCC). Note that ?? GOTHIC LETTER NINETY
>[...] [is] based on the same graphemic model [...]"
>
>Another example of this "transitional" koppa glyph is Cyrillic letter "?"
>("che", U+0427 & U+0447).
>
>Not surprisingly, the numeric value of "?" is 90, which shows that its
>original position in the alphabet must have been between "?" ("pe", numeric
>value = 80) and "?" ("er", numeric value = 100).
>
>_ Marco



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