How do I type Greek?

2 choices:

Do Edit > Special Characters and click on the gear wheel at the top left, select Customize and check the box for Greek. Double click or drag drop to input.

Go to system prefs/language & text/input sources and check the box for Greek, plus the box for Show Input Menu in Finder. Then select Greek from the "flag" menu at the top right of the screen and type.

Symbol fonts that produce Greek when you type Latin are obsolete junk and you should not use them if you happen to find one.

It would be nice if you could re-assign the option+key (e.g. option + a = alpha), but I haven't found a way. What I have done instead is do as Tom said, then just map a keyboard shortcut to change between inputs (I'm using ctrl+space):

Setup keyboard shortcut: "system preferences->keyboard->input Sources->Language" then enable the "select previous input source" (last one on my list), change the shortcut as needed.

Though (as you might know?) for a few of them, you already have dedicated shortcuts (just not all the ones I need, but you might be lucky?):

Greek

16 ∂ Option-D (Delta) )

17 ∆ Option-J (Delta)

18 µ Option-M (Mu)

19 π Option-P (phi)

20 ß Option-S (beta

21 Ω Option-Z (Omega)

22 ∏ Option-Shift-P (phi)

Found here: http://modmyi.com/forums/mac-tips-tricks-mods/328131-100-mac-keyboard-shortcuts- creating-symbols.html)

Cheers,

W

2352 wrote:

It would be nice if you could re-assign the option+key (e.g. option + a = alpha), but I haven't found a way.

One way is to build a custom keyboard layout using

http://scripts.sil.org/ukelele

It's really very easy.

Bob Novy wrote:

Apple has regressed, yes?

No, Apple has progressed, and the other way is stuck in the 1990's. Everyone should be using Unicode, where Greek characters have their own code points. Fonts like the old Symbol which map Greek to Latin codepoints are obsolete and hopefully will disappear. Apple's Symbol font puts things where they are supposed to be under the agreed international standards.

It is really unfortunate that we have so much legacy data which was done the old way....Apple could provide a second "improper" Symbol font to help people deal with that, but has chosen not to.