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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.laser-printers
Subject: Re: Italic Greek
Message-ID: <8610311521.AA16745@phri.uucp>
Date: Fri, 31-Oct-86 10:21:11 EST
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Posted: Fri Oct 31 10:21:11 1986
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Reply-To: phri!roy@seismo.CSS.GOV (Roy Smith)
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reid@DECWRL.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes:
> I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as italic Greek.
> Isn't that kind of like asking for German French or for red green?

	I'm not a typography expert, and I don't know the Greek language
any further than being able to recognize and name (most of) the letters.
With that warning aside, let me jump in and possibly make a fool of myself.

	Why can't there be italic Greek?  At least to the layman, italic
means slanted letters.  A real typographer might cringe if he heard me
refer to Helvetica-Oblique as "italic Helvetica", but we all "know" that's
what it is.  Why couldn't you design an alphabet which has the same
relationship to the Greek letters you get in the LaserWriter's Symbol font
as Times-Italic has to Times-Roman?  I'll take that one step further;
Greek-Italic *does* exist, and I've seen it.

	One of the advantages of living in New York is that by simply
looking at the newspapers people are reading in the subway, eventually
you'll see an example of type in every language ever invented.  While I
can't read the Greek newspapers, I can certainly recognize the letters.
Whether you want to call it that or not, I've seen Greek-Italic.  You may
want to call it Greek-Oblique, but I think that sounds silly.