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Conversion Information

Long-time users of GreekKeys may have documents containing traditional GreekKeys fonts that they wish to preserve. Since the traditional fonts may not work completely in the latest versions of the OS and of applications, it is important to be able to convert the Greek to Unicode so that the documents have a better chance of surviving as useful. Similarly, if you have important documents using any other pre-Unicode encoding for polytonic Greek, you may wish to convert them for longer life and easier transmission between users and applications.

GREEKKEYS CONVERTER

GreekKeysConverter is a Macintosh software program developed and sold by the Swiss classicist Lucius Hartmann. Licensed users can also do conversions via a web upload and download; thus conversion is also possible for Windows users who cannot use the standalone Mac application.

GreekKeysConverter is not owned or sold by the Society for Classical Studies, but it works well with GreekKeys to convert between Unicode and other pre-Unicode polytonic Greek encodings that should no longer be used. The latest version of GreekKeysConverter is 6.0 (last revised January 2013). This version still runs under Mac OS 10.11 El Capitan.

GreekKeysConverter is downloadable at http://www.lucius-hartmann.ch/programme/gkconver.php. The full capabilities of the program to convert the Greek in RTF documents are unlocked only after sending in a registration form by email and receiving a serial number in return (the user undertakes to follow up by sending in payment by regular mail).

HOW TO USE GREEKKEYS CONVERTER (VERSION 6)

Before opening GreekKeysConverter, save your old Word document in RTF (= Rich Text Format), using that option in the Word Save As… dialog.

1. Open GreekKeysConverter. (Enter your registration number if you have never done so.)

2. Make a selection from the choices for encoding to convert from.

3. Make a selection from the choices for encoding to convert to.

4. Enter the name of the font you want to convert to (it can be any font on your system that supports polytonic Unicode Greek).

5. Click on Convert, locate the RTF file needing to be converted in the ensuing Open dialog.

6. An RTF file entitled Converted_[original name] will be created at the location you specify in the Preferences.

There are a couple of preferences that you should be especially careful about.

1. If you regularly enter Greek with GreekKeys Unicode input, then you are following the Unicode Technical Committee's recommendation and are using for the vowels with acute accent the code points in the Greek and Coptic block of Unicode and not the deprecated duplicates of these that are found in the Greek Extended block. In order to maintain consistency in your files and enable correct searching, you should click on Preferences and choose the Conversion pane and be sure that the item shown here is checked.

2. You can specify that the converted file be saved on the desktop or in the same folder as the source file or that you be allowed to choose the location each time in a Save as dialog. Click on Preferences and choose the File pane.

CONVERTING BETWEEN DECOMPOSED AND PRECOMPOSED UNICODE POLYTONIC GREEK

If you wish to move between decomposed and precomposed Unicode Polytonic Greek, then these are the settings to use in GreekKeysConverter version 6. Going to decomposed format, the format to convert from will be Unicode with Private Area (for Mac or Windows), and the format to convert to will be Unicode decomposed. If you have decomposed Greek and want to convert to precomposed, simply reverse those two selections.

MAKING SURE .RTF FILES OPEN IN WORD INSTEAD OF TEXTEDIT

In recent versions of Mac OS X, double-clicking on a .rtf file may cause it to be opened by TextEdit, not MS Word. You do not want this to occur, since you may lose footnoting and some other features of your file. Here is how to make sure that the .rtf files you work with open in MS Word.

1. Select a .rtf file in the Finder and use the Get Info... command (command-i, or under the File menu).

2. If the lock at the lower right corner of the Get Info... window is open, then go to next step. If it is closed, then click on it and authenticate as a user with administrative privileges.

3. Examine the Open with: section; if the choice popup says TextEdit, then change it to Microsoft Word.

4. Click on the button that says "Change all..." under the phrase "Use this application to open all documents like this one." Answer "yes" when a dialogue asks if you really want all files of this type to open with MS Word.

5. Close the Get Info... window.

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