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This document points to resources for the layout and presentation of text in languages that use the Greek script. The target audience includes developers of Web standards and technologies, such as HTML, CSS, Mobile Web, Digital Publications, and Unicode, as well as implementers of web browsers, ebook readers, and other applications that need to render Greek text.
This document points to resources for Greek script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These requirements provide information for Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications about how to support languages written using the Greek script. The information here is developed in conjunction with a document that summarises gaps where the Web fails to adequately support the Greek script.
The editor's draft of this document is being developed in the GitHub repository European Language Enablement (eurlreq), with contributors from the W3C Internationalization Interest Group. It is published by the Internationalization Working Group. The end target for this document is a Working Group Note.
To make it easier to track comments, please raise separate issues or emails for each comment, and point to the section you are commenting on using a URL.
Some links on this page point to repositories or pages to which information will be added over time. Initially, the link may produce no results, but as issues, tests, etc. are created they will show up.
Links that have a gray color led to no content the last time this document was updated. They are still live, however, since relevant content could be added at any time. When the document is updated, links that now point to results will have their live colour restored.
Introduction
Contributors
This document was created by Richard Ishida.
See also the GitHub contributors list for the European Language Enablement project, and the discussions related to the Greek script.
About this document
This document points to resources for Greek script layout and text support on the Web and in eBooks. These resources provide information for developers of Web technologies such as CSS, HTML and digital publications, and for application developers, about how to support languages written using the Greek script. They include requirements, tests, GitHub discussions, type samples, and more,
The document focuses on typographic layout issues. For a deeper understanding of the Greek script and how it works see Greek Orthography Notes, which includes topics such as: Phonology, Vowels, Consonants, and Numbers.
Gap analysis
This document should be used alongside a separate document, Greek Gap Analysis, which describes gaps in language support for users of the Greek script, and prioritises and describes the impact of those gaps on the user.
Gap reports are brought to the attention of spec and browser implementers, and are tracked via the Gap Analysis Pipeline. (Filter for Greek script items)
Related resources
The document Language enablement index points to this document and others, and provides a central location for developers and implementers to find information related to various scripts.
The W3C also has a repository with discussion threads related to the Greek script, including requests from developers to the user community for information about how scripts/languages work, and a notification system that tracks issues in W3C working groups related to the Greek script. See a list of unresolved questions for Greek experts. Each section below points to related discussions. See also the repository home page.
Greek Script Overview
The Greek script is an alphabet, ie. a writing system in which both consonants and vowels are indicated.
Modern Greek comes in 2 flavours: monotonic and polytonic. Monotonic Greek generally uses only the tonos diacritic to show the location of emphasis in a word, although it may also use the dialytika occasionally to separate vowel sounds. Polytonic Greek attaches multiple diacritics more often.
Greek letters are in a sense encoded twice, since there is a sizeable set of atomic characters, but it is also always possible to write equivalent decomposed sequences. The visual forms of letters don't usually interact.
Greek text runs left-to-right in horizontal lines. Words are separated by spaces. The script is bicameral. The shapes of the upper and lowercase forms are typically the same.
Modern Greek has 17 basic consonant letters, plus a special lowercase, word-final form of the letter sigma.
The Modern Greek alphabet has 7 basic vowel letters, but they are combined to produce 8 digraphs representing additional sounds. They can also take tonos and/or dialytika diacritics, for which there are separate code points.
Standalone vowels are written using ordinary vowel letters and no special arrangements.Polytonic Greek can be found occasionally in modern texts, and that adds another 110 combinations of vowel plus diacritic to the repertoire.
Numbers use ASCII digits.
All topics
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
Text direction
Writing mode
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Bidirectional text
Not applicable.
Glyph shaping & positioning
Fonts & font styles
- Requirements
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Context-based shaping & positioning
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
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- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Cursive text
Not applicable.
Letterform slopes, weights, & italics
- Requirements
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- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Case & other character transforms
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- r12a blog: Notes on case conversion • Bicameral scripts
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Typographic units
Characters & encoding
- Requirements
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
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- W3C type samples
- r12a type samples: consonants • vowels
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Grapheme/word segmentation & selection
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes, Word boundaries: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tools
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Punctuation & inline features
Phrase & section boundaries
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
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- W3C type samples
- r12a type samples: phrases • bracketing
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Quotations & citations
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- Wikipedia: Quotation mark
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Emphasis & highlighting
- Requirements
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- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Inline notes & annotations
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Other text decoration & inline features
- Requirements
-
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Data formats & numbers
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Line & paragraph layout
Line breaking & hyphenation
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- Approaches to line-breaking
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Text alignment & justification
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- Approaches to full justification
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Text spacing
- Requirements
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- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Baselines, line height, etc.
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Lists, counters, etc.
- Requirements
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Styling initials
- Requirements
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- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Page & book layout
General page layout & progression
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Grids & tables
- Requirements
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- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Footnotes, endnotes, etc
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Page headers, footers, etc
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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Forms & user interaction
- Requirements
-
- Orthography Notes: Greek
- GitHub discussions
- Type samples
- Tests
-
- Exploratory/interactive test results (tbc)
- Exploratory/interactive test repo (tbc)
- Gap analysis
- Specification links
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