greek-fontenc

Greek font encoding definition files

Author
Günter Milde
Date
2013-05-16
Licence

This work may be distributed and/or modified under the conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3 of this license or any later version.

Abstract

The fontenc standard package supports TeX font encodings via encoding definition files. The mechanism is explained in [fntguide], section 5. This package provides encoding definition files for Greek text font encodings for use with fontenc and 8-bit TeX engines. Currently, only LGR is supported.

Note

The LICR macro names for Greek symbols are chosen pending endorsement by the TeX community and related packages.

Names for archaic characters, accents/diacritics, and punctuation may change in future versions.

Files

lgrenc.def

font encoding definitions for LGR

This file is the successor of the basic LGR encoding definition file which comes with babel’s Greek support and lgrxenc.def from the lgrx bundle. It defines LICR macros for Greek characters that select pre-composed glyphs if possible and places the diacritics according to Greek typesetting rules else. Combined accents can be specified as backslash + transliteration (\~>\textalpha) or iteratively (\~\>\textalpha).

lgrenc.def.txt

literate source (reStructuredText format)

lgrenc.def.html

literate source (HTML format)

lgrenc-test.tex

test example

lgrenc-test.pdf

test output

The literate source was converted with PyLit to TeX and with Docutils to HTML format.

Installation

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

Otherwise, make sure LaTeX can find the file lgrenc.def:

Usage

Pass the encoding name as option to fontenc. For example, specify T1 (Latin) as default font encoding and LGR for Greek with

\usepackage[LGR,T1]{fontenc}

See [fntguide] for details and lgrenc-test.tex for an example.

Greek text font encodings

Greek TeX font encodings are the envisaged T7, LGR, and LGI. Greek letters and symbols are also defined in the Unicode-based font encodings EU1 (XeTeX), EU2 (LuaTeX) and PU (hyperref).

T7

The [encguide] reserves the name T7 for a Greek standard font encoding. However, up to now, there is no agreement on an implementation because the restrictions for general text encodings are too severe for typesetting polytonic Greek.

LGR

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.

The LGR font encoding allows to access Greek characters via an ASCII transliteration. This enables simple input with a Latin keyboard. Characters with diacritics can be selected by ligature definitions in the font (see [greek-usage], [teubner-doc], [cbfonts]).

A major drawback of the transliteration is, that you cannot access Latin letters if LGR is the active font encoding (e.g. in documents or parts of documents given the Babel language greek or polutionikogreek). 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 Latin and Greek like the envisaged T7 or Unicode (with XeTeX or LuaTeX).

LGI

The ‘Ibycus’ fonts from the package ibygrk implement an alternative transliteration scheme (also explained in [babel-patch]). It is currently not supported by greek-fontenc.

The font encoding file lgienc.def from ibycus-babel provides a basic setup (without LICR macros or composite definitions).

References

[fntguide]

LaTeX3 Project Team, LaTeX2ε font selection, 2005. http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/doc/fntguide.pdf

[encguide]

Frank Mittelbach, Robin Fairbairns, Werner Lemberg, LaTeX3 Project Team, LaTeX font encodings, 2006. http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/doc/encguide.pdf

[greek-usage]

Apostolos Syropoulos, Writing Greek with the greek option of the babel package, 1997. http://www.tug.org/texlive/Contents/live/texmf-dist/doc/generic/babel/greek-usage.pdf

[cbfonts]

Claudio Beccari, The CB Greek fonts, Εὔτυπον, τεῦχος № 21, 2008. http://www.eutypon.gr/eutypon/pdf/e2008-21/e21-a01.pdf

[teubner-doc]

Claudio Beccari, teubner.sty An extension to the greek option of the babel package, 2011. http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/teubner/teubner-doc.pdf

[babel-patch]

Werner Lemberg, Unicode support for the Greek LGR encoding Εὔτυπον, τεῦχος № 20, 2008. http://www.eutypon.gr/eutypon/pdf/e2008-20/e20-a03.pdf