Greek Font to Unicode Converter

N.B.: After many months out of commision, the converter is now back up and running. Sorry for any inconvenience the downtime has caused!

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Look at some font examples you can convert

Coming someday:

  • Conversions from:
    • SuperGreek
    • Kadmos & Bosporus (non-GreekKeys format)
    • Ismini

What is Unicode?

Unicode is a single standard for representing all international character sets in a single font. Current fonts contain less than 200 characters, making it necessary to have a different font for every alphabet. Unicode fonts can contain tens of thousands of characters, enough a single font for Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Japanese, and even Chinese. You’ll have them all in one package.

Current Greek fonts use different, incompatible encoding schemes. For instance, final sigma is character #119 in GreekKeys but #106 in WinGreek. If you type a final sigma in GreekKeys, then change the font to WinGreek, the sigma will be changed to an omega. In Unicode fonts,final sigma is always #962.

Unicode is used by Windows NT, the most popular internet browsers (see below), and newer word processors, such as Microsoft Word 97. You can use this site to convert your Greek text in current fonts to this new encoding. Choose a conversion above, click on ‘Next >’, then enter text into the form, or paste it from a word processor. After it has been converted, you can past it right back.

Once converted, you will never have to convert it again, no matter what font you use, because all Unicode fonts use the same encoding no matter what alphabet you need to type.

You can find out more about Unicode from the Unicode Consortium and more about GreekKeys from the GreekKeys FAQ.

Unicode Fonts

First you need a Unicode font. Several are available that don’t support the Extended Greek character set necessary for Classical Greek, namely

Bitstream Cyberbit and Microsoft’s core fonts for the web.

Thankfully, Jeffrey Rusten has now made available a beta version of Athena Roman, a Unicode font based on his popular GreekKeys. You can dowload this font now, but be sure to watch his site for the official release.

Microsoft will soon release a font called Palatino Unicode that supports polytonic (i.e. classical) Greek. Jeffrey Rusten has reviewed it in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (also here)

If you are using Windows 95 or Windows NT you may already have these fonts. For Netscape: On the menu bar select Edit->Preferences…, then in the Preferences dialog, under ‘For the Encoding:’ select ‘Unicode’, then select your Unicode font as the ‘Variable Width Font’

Setting up your browser for Unicode

Unicode is almost universally employed now, so you probably do not need any special setup. If you find you do, take a look at Getting Started with Unicode at Penn State’s Tips for Developing Non-English Web Sites

9 Responses to “Greek Font to Unicode Converter”

  1. Laurel Bowman Says:
    June 14th, 2005 at 6:46 pm

    This is a wonderful idea, but unfortunately I can’t get it to work. I’ve downloaded and installed Athena Roman, and told my browser to use Athena Roman for serif, non-serif, and monospace when looking at Unicode, and have set my browser to look at Unicode. I’ve tried it both as Unicode UTF-8 and Unicode UTF-16. I’m using a Mac OS X 10.3 and Firefox 1.0. I am trying to convert from Greek Keys (Athenian font) cut and pasted out of a Microsoft Office X document. But no matter what I do, and which of the various settings I try, I don’t get a useful result. Here for example is the result if I tell my browser to view it as Unicode UTF-8:

    ᾗἓλλ’ οὖ¬῀ θεοᾖἐ σφιν μᾗ῞AEHIOUVτε τᾗᾷν πεπρωμᾖῆνην
    ᾖἣριν κατασβᾖῆσειαν, ᾖἕν δ’ ᾖἕμοἲ´AEHIOUVῄ τᾖῆλος
    αᾗ῝AEHIOUVτοἲ´AEHIOUVῂν γᾖῆνοιτο τἲ῝AEHIOUVᾃσδε τἲ῝AEHIOUVᾃς μᾗῢχης πᾖῆριἲ´AEHIOUVἔ
    ἲ´AEHIOUVἔς οᾗἀτ’ ᾗ­ν ὥᾷς νᾗάν σκἲ῝AEHIOUVᾃπτρα καἲ´AEHIOUVῄ θρᾗἂνους ᾖἣχει
    μεἲ῀¬νειεν, οᾗἀτ’ ᾗ­ν οᾗᾶξεληλυθἲ῝AEHIOUV῞AEHIOUVς πᾗῢλιν
    ᾖἣλθοι ποτ’ αᾗἆθις· .

    When I set the encoding to “Western” it’s not much better, though I don’t get all of the repetitions of AEHIOU .

    Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?

    Thanks very much,

    L. Bowman

  2. Sean Says:
    June 15th, 2005 at 3:36 pm

    The occurrences of “AEHIOUV” are a bug in the converter. As for the rest, does the GreekKeys example work for you?

  3. Laurel Bowman Says:
    June 24th, 2005 at 3:36 pm

    Yes, it does, except for the recurring “AEHIOUV”. So what am I doing wrong in my own examples? (I need to convert a lot of Greekkeys to Unicode for an article I’m revising, so any help you could be would be most gratefully appreciated!)

  4. Govind M Says:
    July 1st, 2005 at 6:22 am

    Dear Sir,

    I would be grateful if you can kindly help me in solving the following problem.

    I have got a list of 216 Extended Greek Characters which is given below.

    ἀ
    ἁ
    ἂ
    ἃ
    ἄ
    ἅ
    ἆ
    ἇ
    Ἀ
    Ἁ
    Ἂ
    Ἃ
    Ἄ
    Ἅ
    Ἆ
    Ἇ
    ἐ
    ἑ
    ἒ
    ἓ
    ἔ
    ἕ
    Ἑ
    Ἒ
    Ἓ
    Ἔ
    Ἕ
    ἠ
    ἡ
    ἢ
    ἣ
    ἤ
    ἥ
    ἦ
    ἧ
    Ἠ
    Ἡ
    ϲ
    ϳ
    Ἢ
    Ἣ
    Ἤ
    Ἥ
    Ἦ
    Ἧ
    ἰ
    o
    ἲ
    ἴ
    ἵ
    ἶ
    ἷ
    Ἰ
    Ἱ
    Ἲ
    Ἳ
    Ἴ
    Ἵ
    Ἶ
    Ἷ
    ὀ
    ὁ
    ὂ
    ὃ
    ὄ
    ὅ
    Ὀ
    Ὁ
    Ὂ
    Ὃ
    Ὄ
    Ὅ
    ὐ
    ὑ
    ὒ
    ὓ
    ὔ
    ὕ
    ὖ
    ὗ
    Ὑ
    Ὓ
    Ὕ
    Ὗ
    ὠ
    ὡ
    ὢ
    ὣ
    ὤ
    ὥ
    ὦ
    ὧ
    Ὠ
    Ὡ
    Ὢ
    Ὣ
    Ὥ
    Ὦ
    Ὧ
    ὰ
    ά
    ὲ
    έ
    ὴ
    ή
    ὶ
    ί
    ὸ
    ό
    ὺ
    ύ
    ὼ
    ώ
    ᾀ
    ᾁ
    ᾂ
    ᾃ
    ᾄ
    ᾅ
    ᾆ
    ᾈ
    ᾉ
    ᾊ
    ᾋ
    ᾌ
    ᾍ
    ᾎ
    ᾏ
    ᾐ
    ᾑ
    ᾒ
    ᾓ
    ᾔ
    ᾕ
    ᾖ
    ᾖ
    ᾘ
    ᾙ
    ᾙ
    ᾛ
    ᾜ
    ᾝ
    ᾞ
    ᾟ
    ᾡ
    ᾢ
    ᾣ
    ᾤ
    ᾥ
    ᾦ
    ᾧ
    ᾨ
    ᾩ
    ᾪ
    ᾫ
    ᾬ
    ᾭ
    ᾮ
    ᾯ
    ᾰ
    ᾱ
    ᾲ
    ᾳ
    ᾴ
    ᾶ
    ᾷ
    Ᾰ
    Ᾱ
    Ά
    ᾼ
    ῂ
    ῃ
    ῄ
    ῆ
    ῇ
    Ὲ
    Έ
    Ὴ
    Ή
    ῌ
    ῐ
    ῑ
    ῒ
    ΐ
    ῖ
    ῗ
    Ῐ
    Ῑ
    Ὶ
    Ί
    ῠ
    ῡ
    ΰ
    ῤ
    ῥ
    ῦ
    ῧ
    Ῠ
    Ῡ
    Ὺ
    Ύ
    Ῥ
    ῲ
    ῳ
    ῴ
    ῶ
    ῷ
    Ὸ
    Ό
    Ὼ
    Ώ
    ῼ
    Ο
    Π
    Σ
    ῢ

    I am finding it difficult to get the corresponding Beta codes for these Extended Greek characters could you kindly spare some time and advise whether any tool which you may be aware is available to these characters to Beta codes. In case customization is required please let us know whether this can be absorbed in the higher version and if so probable date of release.

    Secondly the text what we are having contains both English, Greek and Extended Greek characters. While converting the Greek, English and Extended Greek characters all the characters get converted to Beta codes even though we want only the Greek and Extended Greek characters to be converted leaving the English Characters untouched. This is our requirement.

    Please inform us on the above aspects.

    Thanks & Regards
    Govind

  5. Philippe Remacle Says:
    October 26th, 2005 at 3:04 am

    Je ne sais plus entrer sur

    http://www.jiffycomp.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jiffy/convert.cgi

    bien à vous.

    Philippe Remacle

  6. LEVREL Michel Says:
    November 7th, 2005 at 7:37 am

    Bonjour,

    Pas de possibilité de passage au delà
    de la page d’accueil

    Codialement

    Michel Levrel

  7. Victor Caston Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 2:37 pm

    Any idea when the GreekKeys > Unicode converter will be back up? Very useful tool.

    Thanks!

    Victor

  8. le van thai Says:
    February 6th, 2006 at 9:41 pm

    hi

  9. Stephan Says:
    April 28th, 2006 at 4:35 am

    I’m currently trying to convert some greek text to unicode (actually it’s the graeca font) and wanted to try your converter. Since the converter is down, i wanted to ask, if there is any chance to get the programm from you?

    best regards, stephan

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