[XeTeX] Transliteration mapping for Greek ?

[Andrew Moschou]

I agree to encourage people to take advantage of what Unicode offers and
modern software will enable people to easily change keyboard layouts and to
type directly in the native script for a language. Using a keyboard with
keys labelled in another script is not usually a problem at least between
modern Greek and Latin because there is a (kind of) one-to-one mapping
between the letters of each script (polytonic Greek is a little more
tricky). I personally have Latin, Greek and Cyrillic keyboard layouts always
available on my computer, I often use all three scripts for some reason or
another, and I have no problem switching between them when using these sort
of phonetic keyboard layouts; a real Greek keyboard would agree, but I use a
phonetic Russian keyboard layout because a real Cyrillic keyboard is very
different, and this is normal outside of Russia, I've heard (or rather
Wikipedia reports).

In my mind, it is no different to type Greek transliteration with a TECkit
mapping or to type Greek directly with a physical US keyboard and Greek
keyboard layout because the fingers still push the same physical keys. I
hope that makes sense. Essentially what I mean is, if typing Greek with a US
keyboard transliteration will still mentally happen either way, since I must
think to push the "V" key if I want an Omega. There is a difference however
when the document is converted back to the native script when it is
compiled. Also, it is much easier to read a language in its native script
than in a strange transliteration.

Now I can think of some situations where it would be useful to have the
TECkit mapping available, mainly if someone might use a computer that
doesn't have an appropriate keyboard layout available. But I'm not sure it
would be appropriate for Polyglossia to include this sort of functionality
and I wonder whether it would be more appropriate if it is provided another
way.

Andrew
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