Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Latest from Tyndale Tech: Unicode

The latest e-mail in David Instone-Brewer's eminently helpful "Tyndale Tech" series concerns Unicode fonts. Although Unicode fonts are quickly becoming the standard in biblical studies, many scholars and students remain largely unaware of what they are, how to find them, and how to use them in their own work. Dr. Instone-Brewer answers these and other questions with a few key links:

Tyndale Unicode Kit

Tyndale Unicode Keyboards

The first of these is Tyndale's easy-to-use installation kit for Greek and Hebrew Unicode fonts and keyboards. Full instructions are provided, although, as Instone-Brewer notes, installation is simple and intuitive. The second is a graphic which allows the user to view the Greek and Hebrew keyboard layouts. You probably won't need to use these for long, but they may be helpful in your first few weeks of typing.

Also included are links to downloadable Unicode Bibles (HB with vowels; LXX with accents; MT/LXX parallel; NT with accents), and the free Diogenes software, which can be used to search databases such as the TLG if you have the disks, or as a stand-alone lexical reference if you do not.

Whether you're a relative newcomer to Unicode (as I am) or a seasoned veteran, all of these are well worth a look.

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