Text Formatting ⇒ How one could enter polytonic greek letters easily?

[kornaros]

I am trying to find a simple and fast way to write text in polytonic greek or transform a non-polytonic greek text to unicode. For example, using the \usepackage[polutonikogreek]{babel} and the \textgreek command like \textgreek{<αμαρτία} I can easily insert aspirate in front of the first alpha of the word αμαρτία . But I cannot copy the resulting text from pdf output because has strange characters like martÐa. My next effort was to use \usepackage{xstring} and \StrSubstitute to substitute >α with ἀ in a greek passage( I used \StrSubstitute{\text}{>α}{ἀ}[\text] to substitute alphas in \text). But there are many rules for alpha, eta and other letters(about ~170 rules) so my method is very time consuming when I have a big text(5 to 10 pages)!

My questions are:
1) Is it possible to have a simple and fast way to write greek using common symbols like >, <, ~ | of polutonikogreek (babel ) to insert accents and other symbols in LaTeX and XeLaTeX?
2) I can copy the resulting text from resulting pdf output without any problem(what you see is what you copy..)
3) The method will respect the polytonic greek hyphenation rules.
Thank you in advance!

[Johannes_B]

I think the easiest way would be to use XeLaTeX along with utf8 input, a font containing the actual glyphs and polyglossia to deal with the hyphenation.


Babel and greek are not the best friends.

[kornaros]

I think the easiest way would be too use XeLaTeX along with utf8 input, a font containing the actual glyphs and polyglossia to deal with the hyphenation.


Babel and greek are not the best friends.

@Johannes_B I think it is hard to type polytonic greek even if you have the right font! I have not a special editor, just TeXworks. So I need a clever and eay way to insert the greek letters into TeX! The use of commands like \newcommand{\alphawithtonos{ά} is not the best way. Maybe the use of catcode but I am not familiar with this command. I would like a simple combination like <αμαρτία (ἁμαρτία) to import ἁ in αμαρτια... Thanks!

[Johannes_B]

How are you inputting ἁμαρτία in your browser?

[kornaros]

How are you inputting ἁμαρτία in your browser?

@Johannes_B I usally use greek-inputter. Please have a look at http://babel.mml.ox.ac.uk/naughton/poly ... utter.html I wished to have such a pair of commands so that writing \greekON <αμαρτ/ια \greekOFF one would easily change non-unnicode greek or even latin characters to polytonic greek!

[Johannes_B]

To the input side: I have a american keyboard layout, to get á

And this is where i was stopped yesterday, just when i noticed that i am writing an a with an accent, not an alpha. The browser application you mentioned automatically transform a to alpha, but in your initial post you were writing/inputting the greek letters directly. I just tried out a keyboard layout for polytonic greek and managed to produce the following, alltough i have to say, it was a Παιν ιν τη ασς. Isn't there any way to input the things directly, without making anything active and substituting stuff?

Code: Select all

% arara: xelatex
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{libertine}
\begin{document}
Ελληνικό Αλφάβητο\par
αμαρτἰα\par
latin alphabet \par
русский кирилица\par

\end{document}

Then i found one of egregs very good answers at TeX.SX, How to insert Greek with “ascii keyboard” and XeTeX, Polyglossia. The solution defines a new language mapping that makes the input of pure ascii text possible.

[kornaros]

@Johannes_B Thank you very much for your answer! The egreg solution is good enough. I am looking for a solution independent from asciitogreek.tec and more suitable for other needs. I try to find a simple trick to combine catcodes for example ` with or ~ or | for general purposes(not just greek inputting)I played with \newunicodechar package with no success! At the moment I am looking at http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... characters Anyway, thank you for your interest! If I find a good general solution maybe I send a post.

[Johannes_B]

Catcodes and active charackters are quite a mystery for me, i haven't read that chapter in the TeXbook yet.

If you decide to post a question on TeX.SX, it would be nice to crosslink and maybe present the sumarized results here.


EDIT: I have read a bit about polytonic greek and i have to say, wow, this is complicated.