Monday, May 31, 2010

Greek Legacy Fonts to Unicode Converters

This is an update of a post from 2008.
Everyone should really be using Unicode for Greek fonts now, but there are still a few publishers who request Greek be rendered in one of the older legacy fonts. You may also have some older documents with non-Unicode Greek fonts, and you want to convert them to Unicode. The problem with the older TrueType fonts (e.g., Sgreek, SPIonic, Graeca, etc.) is that they each have their own character encoding, so there is no single way to convert these fonts to Unicode. What's the solution? I have gathered all the Greek font converters of which I am aware. Many of them allow conversion to/from Unicode. Note that it is possible to convert from a legacy font to Unicode back to a different legacy font if necessary.
Also note that most of the converters are Microsoft Word macros or templates. If you try to convert a file that has footnotes with Greek, the footnotes might not get converted.
Let me know if I missed any.

Greek Transcoder (Word document template) - excellent, free converter; handles the following fonts

  • Beta Code (Betaread)
  • GreekKeys (Athenian, Bosporos, Kadmos, Xanthippe)
  • Ismini
  • LaserGreek (GraecaII, GraecaUBS, GreekSansII, GreekSansLS, Hellenica, Odyssea _/F/UBS, Payne, Payne Condensed, SymbolGreekII, UncialII)
  • Paulina Greek
  • SGreek (SGRead, SGreek, SgreekFixed)
  • SPIonic (SPIonic, Tadzoatrekei, Takeros, Talaurinos)
  • SuperGreek (Achille, Graeca, GreekSans, SSuperGreek, SuperGreek, SymbolGreek, UncialLS)
  • Vilnius University (Anacreon, Attica, Corinthus, Corinthus Lector, Grecs du roi, Greek Old Face V, Greek Grotesque, Hellenica, Hierapolis, Milan Greek V, Odyssea)
  • WinGreek and Son of WinGreek (Aisa, Angaros, Athenian, Grammata, Grecs du roi WG, Greek, Greek Garamond, Greek Old Face _/C, Korinthus, Milan Greek, Standard Greek)
  • Unicode

Galaxie BibleScript (Word macro/template)
  • Use the Windows Installer to Galaxie Greek/Hebrew fonts and Word template
  • Involves a two-step process converting legacy fonts to Galaxie fonts and then to Unicode
  • Greek fonts handled: Alexandria, Koine, Gideon, Mounce, Bwgrkl, SymbolGreekP, Graeca, WinGreek, GraecaII, SuperGreek, Sgreek (also Hebraica/II, Bwhebb, SuperHebrew, Shebrew)
BibleWorks BWGRKL to Unicode (Word macro)

BibleWorks BWTRANSH to Unicode (Word macro)
Sgreek (from Silver Mountain; used in BibleWindows and Bibloi)

  • Bibloi 8.0 includes a Unicode Type Assistant for Sgreek to Unicode
  • Silver Mountain also sells ($49) a Beta Export program for use with the Beta Code TLG and PHI data which converts those texts to Unicode.
SIL (Word template and standalone SILConverters 3.1)

  • IPA93 legacy fonts (Doulos, Sophia, Manuscript) to Unicode
  • Check here and here.
Meander's Nod (online)

  • GreekKeys (Athenian, Attika, Sparta, Salamis)
  • WinGreek
  • Bosporus(GreekKeys format)
  • Kadmos (GreekKeys format)
  • ISO 8859-7 (Modern Greek)
  • Beta Code
  • > Unicode, Beta Code, GreekKeys, WinGreek
Logos3: Graeca/GraecaII to Unicode (within Logos program converting Word docs - I cannot find a similar converter in Logos4.)

Multikey (Word macro)

  • Aisa
  • Logos Gramma
  • Athenian
  • OldGreekSerif
  • WinGreek
  • WP Greek Century
  • WP GreekTimes Ancient
  • MgPolAplaM
  • TimesTenGreekP
  • Kadmos
  • Grk
Greek and Hebrew Encoding Converter (Ken Penner - online: copy/paste textbox)
  • From: Unicode, SPIonic, Greek BETA, SGreek, LaserGreek, AG, SPTiberian, Linguist HebraicaII, B-Hebrew transliteration, Greek Unicode NFD, Unaccented Greek Unicode, Greek Code Page
  • To: Greek Unicode NFD, Greek BETA, Unaccented B-Greek, SPTiberian, B-Hebrew transliteration, SuperHebrew, Unaccented Greek Unicode
 JBLC (paid conversion service for RTF files)

  • "...transforms texts with legacy fonts like SPIonic, SuperGreek, Bwgrkl, and others to any Unicode font"
Antioch ($50 for registered version: Word macro)
  • includes keyboard and converter
  • To Unicode from WinGreek / Son of WinGreek, SGreek, GreekKeys, Linguist's Software (also called LaserGreek), Vilnius University coding, SIL, SPIonic, Lector, Titus and Ismini.

3 comments:

  1. Your link to the Galaxie BibleScript tool appears to be dead. I believe the URL you now want to use should be http://www.galaxie.com/biblescript

    ReplyDelete
  2. I run BibleSupport.com and create Bible software modules from public domain content. Your list is a HUGE help, because sometimes fonts are rendered with "odd" fonts instead of unicode. Now I have a way of handling them properly! Thank you for making this list!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Someone should get Bible Language fonts into the Google Fonts project. By using their font servers, webpages using biblical greek and hebrew could be standardized and much improved.

    ReplyDelete