Silver Greek fonts

For a long time IBM-computer users who wanted to display and print 
quality Greek characters were locked into the proprietary sets of word-
processors such as WordPerfect. This meant that the user could not 
share his Greek characters with other programs for word-processing, 
database, desktop publishing, graphical presentation, textual analysis 
with spreadsheets, and indeed for general communication with colleagues 
(with different systems). MS Windows 3.x opens font-sharing, and makes 
available the same fonts to all the diverse Windows programs (for 
display and printing). But of the few Greek fonts that have appeared, 
most are limited to the Modern Greek set, which lacks full range of 
accents, subscripts, diacritics and certain letters, while those that 
have the Ancient Greek rely even more on obscure keystrokes and 
proprietary keyboard arrangements (just like in the Macintosh world). 
  
John Baima of Silver Mountain Software, a long-standing leader in 
programs for Biblical and Classical studies (LBase, Bible Windows, TLG 
Workplace) has now made available his Ancient Greek fonts for Windows 
in stand-alone packages. Each pack contains both ATM Postscript and 
TrueType fonts: so far there are three "Silver Greek" families, all 
with full Ancient Greek, including papyrological. 
 
Rather than rely on idiosyncratic character codes, Silver Greek 
ingeniously employ the scheme of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae 
(University of California at Irvine), the largest computerised database 
of Ancient Greek texts in the world. The TLG scheme uses the codes of 
an ordinary keyboard, for example, a for alpha, g for gamma, z for 
zeta, h for eta, \ for grave accent, etc. Compatibility across 
different systems is its first priority. The rich TLG scheme covers the 
Ancient Greek in full, and is the de facto standard. Silver Greek 
follows the TLG, so for example, alpha grave is a\. The minor deviations 
are in the cases where the precise alignment of diacritic with vowel 
differs in each case, i.e. vowels with iota subscript. 
 
With these highly recommended Greek fonts the Windows user now has the 
best of all computer worlds. Silver Greek offers a unique combination: 
elegant ATM Postscript and TrueType fonts, using intuitive, ordinary 
keyboard strokes, based on a world-standard coding scheme. 

Dr. Lucas Siorvanes
Dept. of Philosophy
Kings College, University of London.
Jan 1994