Beta2Uni
A free Beta Code to Unicode Converter
About this service
Beta2Uni converts Beta Code to Unicode UTF-16, little-endian. It comes with two flavours:
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A basic converter: a "pure" beta code text file converter.
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An extended converter: a TLG beta code binary file interpreter (conversion of the segmented binary TLG/PHI compatible TXT/IDT files).
This service implements the sections relative to the Greek and Latin alphabets of the specifications provided by the TLG in the following references:
What is Beta Code?
Beta Code is a character and formatting encoding convention developed specifically to enable the accurate digital representation of ancient Greek texts (and other archaic languages) on an ASCII-based system. It was developed by David W. Packard in the late 70's and adopted by the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG®) in 1981. Beta Code has become the standard for encoding polytonic Greek.
Credits
The source code of the converters has been developed by Claude Devis at the Center for Natural Language Processing (CENTAL), Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). In his extended version, this service uses the Open Source C++ programming library Libycus developed by Sean Redmond.
Basic converter
The basic version converts only 'pure' Beta Code text files to Unicode (UTF-16, little-endian).
Extended converter
A TLG beta code text file interpreter (conversion of the segmented binary TLG/PHI compatible TXT/IDT files).