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How to transfer Greek texts to other programs and back

How can you feed Greek texts into office packages, Microsoft Word, professional layouting packages such as Adobe InDesign, web design packages such as Dreamweaver or GoLive, or indeed into any other modern software package?

There are two methods:

• Method 1: Transfer the text from Nanos to the respective other program via the clipboard.
• Method 2: In Nanos, save the Greek text to a Unicode text file (UTF-8 or UTF-16), then open that file in the respective other program.

Step-by-step descriptions:

Method 1: via the clipboard

• First step: in Nanos, mark (highlight) the text that you wish to process in the other software package. If you wish to mark the entire text, enter Ctrl-A.
• Second step: copy the marked text to the clipboard. This is done by entering Ctrl-C, or by mouse-clicking once on the Copy button. Alternatively, you may select the option Copy from the Edit menu.
• Third step: open the other software package and paste in the clipboard contents. This is normally done by entering Ctrl-C in that software package. (On Apple computers, you generally have to enter Command-C instead.)
• Fourth step: assign a Greek Unicode font to the pasted-in text. Nanos comes with a selection of such fonts. Most modern software packages will be able to work with them as well. All modern font publishers are publishing Greek fonts in the Unicode format, as the modern ISO norms are based on Unicode. A Greek Unicode font is a font which contains the Greek characters in the Unicode ranges Greek and Extended Greek.
  Assigning a Greek Unicode font to your pasted-in text is fairly easy in most software packages. Normally it is done by marking (highlighting) the pasted-in text, then specifying a Greek Unicode font for it. Nanos comes with the Greek Unicode fonts Aisa Unicode, Code2000 and Proson. Proson looks very much like the font used in the Oxford Classical Texts (OCT) editions. Other excellent Greek Unicode fonts are Gentium, GentiumAlt, Titus Cyberbit Basic, and all Greek fonts by professional font publishers such as Adobe, Bitstream, ITC, to mention a few.
• Fifth step: now you can selectively add other layouting features to your Greek text, such as bold, italic or underlined text attributes.
• The same method also works the other way round, to transfer Greek text from other software packages to Nanos.

Method 2: via a text file

• First step: in Nanos, save your Greek text using either the default UTF-8 option or the UTF-16 option. In either case, your text will be saved in a standard Unicode text file, compliant with international norms and regulations.
• Second step: open this text file using the other software package. Most modern software packages that work with text can open UTF-8 and UTF-16 text files.
• Third step: assign a Greek Unicode font to the pasted-in text. Nanos comes with a selection of such fonts. Most modern software packages will be able to work with them as well. All modern font publishers are publishing Greek fonts in the Unicode format, as the modern ISO norms are based on Unicode. A Greek Unicode font is a font which contains the Greek characters in the Unicode ranges Greek and Extended Greek.
  Assigning a Greek Unicode font to your pasted-in text is fairly easy in most software packages. Normally it is done by marking (highlighting) the pasted-in text, then specifying a Greek Unicode font for it. Nanos comes with the Greek Unicode fonts Aisa Unicode, Code2000 and Proson. Proson looks very much like the font used in the Oxford Classical Texts (OCT) editions. Other excellent Greek Unicode fonts are Gentium, GentiumAlt, Titus Cyberbit Basic, and all Greek fonts by professional font publishers such as Adobe, Bitstream, ITC, to mention a few.
• Fourth step: now you can selectively add other layouting features to your Greek text, such as bold, italic or underlined text attributes.
• The same method also works the other way round, when you want to transfer Greek text from other software packages into Nanos: save your Greek text as a Unicode text file (UTF-8 or UTF-16), then open that file in Nanos and edit the Greek text. Afterwards, save it in Nanos and open it again in the respective other software package. That way, you can re-edit Greek text in Nanos even after you have transferred it to another software package.

Requirements:

• For above method 1 (transfer via the clipboard): the other software package must support your operating system's clipboard function, and it must support Unicode fonts.
• For above method 2 (transfer via Unicode text files): the other software package must support Unicode fonts and UTF-8 and/or UTF-16 text files.

This is just a very small, random selection of a myriad of compatible software packages. All modern operating systems and software packages support the Unicode-based international norms and regulations that Nanos implements. Software developers around the world are bound by these rules, and in future all relevant software packages will more or less have to be compatible.

Generally speaking, most software packages published for Linux already fulfil the requirements for exchanging Greek text, i.e. they are Unicode-enabled and support UTF-8 (and/or UTF-16) text files. For example, all components of the OpenOffice package work seamlessly with Nanos, including the text editor, spreadsheet, web designer, presentation package, address book, etc.

Incompatible (pre-Unicode) technology:

Apple's previous Mac OS (versions 7, 8 and 9) does not yet comply with international rules and regulations regarding Greek text processing. As a result, software that runs under this operating system is generally incompatible with text produced with Nanos. Reason: Mac OS does not yet support Unicode fully. It also does not support modern Java Runtime Engines, so it is not possible to run Nanos itself on Apple's old operating system.
Apple's modern operating system, Mac OS X, fully supports Unicode, so it is compatible with text produced with Nanos. From version 10.2.8 onwards, Mac OS X also supports modern Java Runtime Engines, so there is a Nanos version for Mac OS X also (version 10.2.8 and onwards). On some versions of Mac OS X, a Java Runtime Engine is not included with the operating system itself. In such cases, users will have to download it from Apple through the "Software Update" function.

Some older versions of Microsoft Office, and many older Microsoft Works components are not able to handle Unicode fonts properly. Fortunately, most versions of Microsoft Word and of Microsoft Works-Text editor (only the text editor of Microsoft Works!) are compatible.

DOS software does not fulfil the requirements.