News

Files

babel-greek.ins; babel-greek.pdf

Source of the language definition file greek.ldf for use with Babel.

athnum.dtx; athnum.pdf

Athenian Numerals.

grmath.dtx; grmath.pdf

Greek log-like Operators.

grsymb.dtx; grsymb.pdf

Macros for Greek symbols (obsoleted by the greek-fontenc package).

test-greek.pdf; test-greek.tex

Tests and Examples for 8-bit TeX.

test-unicode-greek.pdf; test-unicode-greek.tex

Tests and Examples for XeTeX/LuaTeX.

test-unicode-lgr.pdf; test-unicode-lgr.tex

Tests and Examples for XeTeX/LuaTeX with LGR 8-bit fonts.

usage.pdf; usage.tex

Description of the Latin transliteration for Greek defined by the LGR font encoding.

Requirements

The “babel-greek” package requires the babel base package and parts of the greek-fontenc package. The greek-inputenc package is recommended when using 8-bit TeX engines.

Use with XeTeX/LuaTeX requires also xgreek-fixes.def from polyglossia for correct up/downcasing.

Typesetting Greek texts requires Greek text fonts.

Plain TeX is currently not supported. Patches are welcome.

Installation

If possible, get this package from your distribution using its installation manager.

Otherwise, make sure LaTeX can find the required files:

• Download and unpack babel-greek.zip.

• Run tex or latex on the batch file babel-greek.ins.

• Move all files ending in .ldf or .sty into a directory searched by TeX.

• To produce the documentation, run the file usage.tex and all files ending in .dtx through LaTeX.

Usage

Pass the “greek” option to babel:

\usepackage[greek]{babel}

For polytonic Greek, set the language attribute “polutoniko”:

\usepackage[greek]{babel}
\languageattribute{greek}{polutoniko}

or

\usepackage[greek.polutoniko,english]{babel}

Similarly, the attribute “ancient” selects the ancient Greek language variant.

With XeTeX/LuaTeX, load fontspec before babel, so that babel-greek can set up the Unicode font encoding for use with Greek, e.g.

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Linux Libertine O}
\setsansfont{Linux Biolinum O}
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}

For details see babel-greek.pdf and the babel documentation.

Literal input of Greek characters is possible with the greek-inputenc package or with XeTeX or LuaTeX. For the Latin transliteration provided by the LGR font encoding, see usage.pdf and the example files provided with greek-fontenc.

Greek text fonts

A list of Greek text fonts for use with LaTeX is available at the CTAN http://www.ctan.org/topic/font-greek

With the XeTeX or LuaTeX engines, the user should ensure that the chosen font contains the required glyphs (the default Latin Modern fonts miss them). Examples for suitable fonts are the CM-unicode or the Linux Libertine OpenType fonts as well as any system-wide installed OTF fonts that support Greek (e.g. Deja Vu).

The LGR font encoding is the de-facto standard for typesetting Greek with 8-bit LaTeX. Fonts in this encoding include the CB fonts (matching CM), grtimes (Greek Times), Kerkis (matching URW Bookman), and the GFS font collection. Setup of these fonts as Greek variant to matching Latin fonts is facilitated by the substitutefont package.

LGR Latin Transliteration

The LGR font encoding generates Greek characters via an ASCII transliteration. This enables simple input with a Latin keyboard. Characters with diacritics are selected by ligature definitions in the font (see usage.pdf).

The following ASCII characters are converted to Greek symbols:

Accent symbols and punctuation:

A major drawback of the LGR transliteration is that you cannot access Latin letters and some symbols if LGR is the active font encoding (e.g. in documents or parts of documents given the Babel language greek). This means that for every Latin-written word or acronym an explicit language-switch is required. This problem can only be solved via a font-encoding comprising both Latin and Greek like the hypothetical T7 or Unicode (with XeTeX or LuaTeX).