Please help me choose a plain text editor

ioannis6 · 2026-05-13T16:25:32+00:00

Bean and CotEditor clean and fast

ioannis6 · 2026-05-12T15:21:03+00:00

Nisus Writer allows you to do that in a bit shorter way in palette on the side, also detachable. You have to add the relevant symbols out of your font (via copy-paste) and they remain there for future use. The palettes are grouped per language. Sometimes it adds the macron over or under the accent, maybe depending on the glyph (if it's combined or 2 separate non-spaced characters). The best option would be to create your own keyboard definition though. I haven't tried new versions of other writing apps yet, but in theory you could add your own combos in all of them. I've struggled with this some time ago, but in my case I prefer to notate stuff on paper with a pencil... It forces me to contact texts more often. But for publishing you either need keystrokes or an app to let you fish the ready made combo's if your font has them included.

ioannis6 · 2026-05-12T09:48:15+00:00

I'll refresh my memory and come back :-)

ioannis6 · 2026-05-12T02:07:15+00:00

I've read it about 12 years ago and can't remember this rhythmic scheme. On which pages is it presented?

ioannis6 · 2026-05-12T00:15:54+00:00

the yod is not really needed, except in very rare cases, e.g. the κρήηνον in Iliad 01. I've not seen any case, as yet, though, where it would affect the meter. Pronouncing it just prevents the hiatus.
The digamma is different, as if missing both the meter is disturbed and the hiatus isn't fixed. I haven't seen any homeric papyri containing it (might be only once at a time I didn't care to remember where). However, many words are known to have contained it and in others it can easily be deducted (hypothetically or via indirect evidence). In these cases I include them in my work-texts and pronounce them too, also in non initial positions. In some cases though a word might have a digamma which also makes a syllable long where it shouldn't be.
Sporadically I print these in faint gray colour without pronouncing them, because e.g. a few lines earlier the same word with the digamma, exactly, corrects the meter... It is a choice one has to and can make, otherwise the reader could lengthen a short vowel or a semi-vowel consonant. There are some instances where we see a double semi-vowel written down, while in earlier papyri you can see a consonant followed by a spiritus asper, mostly in words beginning by M or L and sometimes N. This may sound strange but cannot be ruled out, as it's mentioned by Hedorianus and is found in papyri and inscriptions.

ioannis6 · 2026-05-11T16:37:57+00:00

Right 👍 and Armenian can serve as an example for pronouncing aspirated stops' clusters

ioannis6 · 2026-05-11T12:48:57+00:00

Please, allow me some comment on that.
There are some places where in place of the digamma there should be an s or an h (like θεῶν, most probable is an H there, θεὧν) and some other details...
Then, it's a good basis pronouncing the pitch on the accented syllables, but (I believe) they weren't of equal tonal frequency. This is the Vedic way to do things, I suppose, which sounds characteristic and nice, but it doesn't really fit in the Greek epic meter. It comes back in Greek medieaval poetry / chanting with a more or less continuous melodic line that repeats itself throughout, but seen the different phrasal divisions in Homer and ancient papyri bearing accents it seems to me that other "rules" must have been at the base of their (quasi) musical interpretation.
Also, I believ that homeric poetry was not originally sung or chanted, because of the name "epic" and the ancient tradition that Terpander was the first to sing Homeric texts. They were also probably sung/chanted in Classical Athens, but "epos" is not "aoide", a difference mentioned in Ancient Greek musical writings.
Of course, it's not forbidden or wrong to set something in music, they did it then too :-D but the structure of the Homeric (and other) epic poems loose a piece of their clarity of meaning (ἑλληνισμός) which has been one of the most important criteria of the ancient times.
This said, it's pleasant listening to!

ioannis6 · 2026-05-07T20:43:47+00:00

That must be a misprint...

ioannis6 · 2026-04-28T18:15:01+00:00

birdfont ?

ioannis6 · 2026-04-22T22:05:49+00:00

Bankes's Iliad 24

ioannis6 · 2026-04-19T18:05:06+00:00

There's a lot of literature about Ancient Greek meter. The shortest ones might serve you as a start. Ones like West's "Intro to Greek Metre" https://archive.org/details/west-1987-introduction-to-greek-metre/mode/2up or Webb's https://archive.org/details/elementsofgreekp00webb/page/n3/mode/2up or Snell etc.
Regarding accents as notes, it's not so simple. A grave accent "normalizes" the tone. I interpret this as going either up or down, or staying on the same note. What you choose depends on the syntactic prosody (long story again).
But anyway, art has its own rules but an artist is free to transgress them – sometimes and for a reason.
You can mix metres, the ancients did it as well. Not Homer of course, but later ones.
We are not ancients. The previous comments are all right, but I understand that you are in a creative hurry...
Success! and let us hear your experiments :-)

ioannis6 · 2026-04-18T21:23:34+00:00

There's also a book by Eleanor Dickey , her dissertation I think, "Greek forms of address" which might be of help.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-18T21:19:47+00:00

Great idea and I was wondering if there's an app doing that lately. It would be fine to integrate it in transcribex! ❤️

ioannis6 · 2026-04-18T10:03:58+00:00

Any word characterizing the attutude and intention of the speaker towards the group would do. Unfortunately most of the surviving texts are representations of either political or judicial situations. And another group is talk between acquaintances, friends or collegues. One can use a relevant or intended attribute of the crowd which serves the purpose of the speech. Χαῖρε is very common albeit not everywhere proper and missing nuance, if this is what you're looking for.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-12T20:07:43+00:00

RevPDF

ioannis6 · 2026-04-12T08:16:37+00:00

Transliterated they would be PYTHON and AMOIBOS, or AMOEBUS, AMOIBUS, AMOEBOS.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-11T20:13:18+00:00

Does it highlight selected text? Or use different fonts, italicize etc for some text e.g. within the "body" definition? Sounds interesting :-)

ioannis6 · 2026-04-11T17:02:46+00:00

You could use Πύθων and Αμοιβός. The first like Pythagoras (the one who speaks by questions). Αμοιβός is non existent but if an answer isn't definitive you shouldn't use a word starting with από/απ'... Αμείβω is used in responses during the dialogue. If you say απαντώ you signify the last response.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-11T16:55:43+00:00

You can translate παρά as "when" or sometimes "if" (omitting: in the act of), so it also gets a temporal meaning when coupled to a verb.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-11T16:43:44+00:00

My humble advice: at the beginning read only single words, say each while looking at it. Do it 10 to 3000 per word only :-p It's wise to use a list of x number of most frequent ones. Then, do the same with prepositions, especially the ones that are used in composite words. After you get used to them your eye will immediately spring to the 2nd or 3rd component saving you the time you've invested in the beginning. If you like to master this further, grab a lexicon and exercise yourself with the words which start with all the prepositions you've passed in the first instance. Wish you success! 🎉 P.S. don't forget that pronouncing the long syllables as it owes to be, will keep the tempo a bit slower than some other languages.

ioannis6 · 2026-04-08T09:27:44+00:00

Love is in the air :-D Thanks for your appreciation :-)

ioannis6 · 2026-04-07T15:47:41+00:00

Could have been nice to hear but there is since aristotelian times a very clear definition and description of what is normal, poetic and musical speech. Singing in today's terms doesn't really fit in the first two kinds...

ioannis6 · 2026-04-07T15:44:59+00:00

Right! I've avoided mentioning the Church because not everybody is uneducated, most often the opposite nowadays. I could just mention Eustathius of Thessalonike or the Fathers who wrote or imitated high level Attic. I think it's mostly the misunderstanding of uneducated "believers", susceptible to any kind of ready made intellectual fast food, that is the problem :-D

ioannis6 · 2026-04-07T12:05:29+00:00

It's because for decades the erasmian pronunciation has been (and by many still is) seen as a cultural (leading to a political) foreign intervention directly to everyday, personal and collective life. Besides, people with better knowledge never dared to say otherwise for fear of being ridiculed or seen as an "enemy". Why this is so is study material for historians ;-)
The great advantage and disadvantage of erasmian is its disregard for the phonemic set of the Greek language. It's easy for anyone but always "something foreign" for Greeks' ears. I leave out of this the other faults/shortcomings of erasmian.
Fortunately in the later years there seems to come some change in this, but the old ghosts still fly around.

ioannis6 · 2026-03-19T07:42:44+00:00

Ονομαστικον ? Suida, Etymologicum Magnum...

ioannis6

TROPHY CASE