Adding the Greek Polytonic Keyboard
The following steps must only be performed once.
- Open System Preferences.
- Select International
- Select Input Menu. Make sure the boxes next to Keyboard Viewer and Show input menu in menu bar are checked.
- Scroll down the list of languages and check the box next to Greek Polytonic.
- Exit System Preferences. There should now be a flag in the top right corner of the screen. To type with the Greek alphabet, click on the flag and select Greek Polytonic. That's it!
Viewing the Greek Polytonic Keyboard Layout
The Keyboard Viewer is a built-in utility that allows you to see the current keyboard layout. If you need to know what key to use for a certain letter or diacritic, this is the easiest way to find out. Also, clicking on a key on the keyboard viewer will send that keypress to the active application just as though you had typed it.
- To view the Greek Polytonic keyboard layout, click on the flag in the top corner of the screen, and select Show Keyboard Viewer.
- The Keyboard Viewer shows you the Greek Polytonic keyboard layout. Keys for diacritics are orange. If the diacritics are illegible because the keyboard viewer is too small, click the green button in the top left corner of the window.
- Additional diacritics are available with the Shift key.
- A few more diacritics (really just a breve, macron, and an alternate way to type an iota subscript) are available with the Option and Shift+Option keys.
How to Use Diacritics
To use diacritics, type the desired diacritics first, then the letter they go with. To figure out what key to press for each diacritic, use the Keyboard Viewer as shown above.
For example, to type an omega with an iota subscript, circumflex, and smooth breathing:
- Type an iota subscript by pressing Option + i or {
- Type a circumflex by pressing [
- Type a smooth breathing by pressing ' (single quote)
- Type an omega by pressing v
In this example I used the separate circumflex and smooth breathing keys ([ and ', respectively), although it is also possible to use the - key (hyphen) to add both the circumflex and smooth breathing at the same time. But, for reasons I do not understand, if an iota subscript is typed first, the accent and breathing mark must be added individually rather than by the combined accent+breathing keys. However it is possible to use a combined accent+breathing key and then add the iota subscript after, just not the other way around.
Although they may look like multiple characters, captial letters with an iota subscript are a single character. The picture below shows a capital eta with an iota subscript. It is not possible to delete only the eta or only the iota, as the eta+iota is a single character.
