Beta code is a kind of standard notation for representing accented Greek in plain ASCII text.
The alphabet conversion looks like this:
A B Γ Δ E Z H Θ I K Λ M N Ξ O Π P Σ T Y Φ Χ Ψ Ω
A B G D E Z H Q I K L M N C O P R S T U F X Y W
Also, digamma (F) is represented by V.
It is not case sensitive; the asterisk is used beforehand to indicate a letter that is capitalized. No distinction is made between final sigma and the other kind.
Accents, breathing, and other marks, which go after the vowel being modified:
For capital letters, these marks should modify the asterisk (for 'A, use */A), unless the mark is actually on the letter instead of in front of it - for Á use *A/.
Miscellaneous marks:
Sigmas:
- S1 - medial sigma
- S2 - final sigma (use S1 and S2 only when the rules would give you the other)
- S3 - lunate sigma
Escape sequences are done by using a number after a sign (like the sigma signs). There are a whole lot of them and you probably won't run into them, so I'll leave them for someone else to node, but in general:
- $ indicates use of a particular Greek font
- & is a Roman font
- % is various punctuation
- " is various quotation marks
- @ is various formatting
- [ is various bracketing
- < is various "quasi-brackets", different kinds of markup spanning text
- { is nontextual markup (titles, etc.)
- # is other symbols in text (pretty much everything).