Greek support for 8-bit (La)TeX
*******************************

LaTeX Internal Character Representations for Greek
==================================================

State of the art
----------------

Greek LICRs are defined/used by the packages

:lgrx:      lgrxenc.def, lgrenc.dfu,
:hyperref:  puenc.def,
:ucs:       uni3.def, uni31.def,
:xunicode:  xunicode.sty
:textgreek: textgreek.sty,

Currently, 

* there are incompatibilities between the definitions of archaic characters
  and variants.

* Babel and the EU2 encoding (eu2enc.def) miss Greek LICRs.

* Only lgrx and ucs define LICRs for the "Extended Greek" Unicode block.

Proposals
---------

* Agree on a common set of `LaTeX Internal Character Representations` (LICR)
  for Greek characters of the "Greek and Coptic" and the "Extended Greek"
  Unicode blocks.

* Update "participating" packages/projects to support the common Greek LICRs.
  
  The general rule should be to generate the common set but accept 
  compatibility and convenience aliases.

* Use LICRs instead of LGR specific transliteration for representation of
  Greek characters in

  :babel: "Babel strings" in greek.ldf
  :greek-inputenc: currently translates to LGR-specific Latin transliteration

* Document the LICRs for use in external "to-LaTeX converters" and
  LaTeX-generating programs (recode, LyX, Docutils, pandoc, Python codecs,
  ...)

CTAN organization
=================

With the Babel version 3.8b, came some changes to the file organization:

  Babel language files are "outsourced" and are located in a separate
  directory ...

  ...

  - Fonts are not strictly part of a language, so they are best placed in
    the corresponding TeX tree. This includes not only tfm, vf, ps1, otf, mf
    files and the like, but also fd ones.

  - Font and input encodings are usually best placed in the corresponding
    tree, too, but sometimes they belong more naturally to the babel style.
    Note you may also need to define a LICR.

  -- http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/required/babel/base/CONTRIB


CB-Font definition files
------------------------

The *.fd files now in babel-contrib/greek/ set up the CB-Fonts as CM and LM
substitute. They could move to the cb-complete package.
http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/babel-contrib/greek/greek.fdd

Encodings
---------

Greek input and font encodings can be used independent from babel.
Currently, http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/greek/encodings
is a link to greek-inputenc/ while the LGR font encoding is defined in
babel-contrib/greek and lgrx.

I propose to change "language/greek/encodings" to a directory with the
subdirectories "greek-inputenc" and "greek-fontenc"

The new package "greek-fontenc" should contain the LGR font definition file
"lgrenc.def", documentation and tests, replacing both lgrenc.def from Babel
and lgrxenc.def from lgrx.
In future, it may also hold a comprehensive font encoding definition for LGI
and (if this ever comes to live) T7.

"greek-inputenc" should be updated to use LICRs and to include
"lgrenc.dfu" now in lgrx.

Related packages
================

See also http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/language/greek

LICR and encodings
------------------

Babel http://www.ctan.org/pkg/babel
  Multilingual support for Plain TeX or LaTeX

  "Since version 3.9b, Babel uses contributed configuration files that
  provide the detail of what has to be done for each language."

Babel-Greek http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/babel-contrib/greek
  Greek language support for babel

lgrx http://www.ctan.org/pkg/lgrx
  Greek text with the LGR font encoding

greek-inputenc
  Macintosh Greek encoding and ISO 8859-7 definition files for use
  with inputenc.

xunicode http://www.ctan.org/pkg/xunicode
  Generate Unicode characters from accented glyphs

EUenc http://www.ctan.org/pkg/euenc
  Font encoding definitions for unicode fonts loaded by LaTeX in X∃TeX
  or LuaTeX. The package provides two encodings: — EU1, designed for
  use with X∃TeX, which the fontspec uses for unicode fonts which require
  no macro-level processing for accents, and — EU2, which provides the
  same facilities for use with LuaTeX.

hyperref http://www.ctan.org/pkg/hyperref
  handle cross-referencing commands in LaTeX to produce hypertext
  links in the document


ucs http://www.ctan.org/pkg/ucs
  Extended UTF-8 input encoding support for LaTeX

textgreek
  Upright greek letters in text


Fonts in LGR encoding
---------------------

Only fonts available in T1 (vector) format are listed.


CB Fonts http://www.ctan.org/pkg/cbgreek-complete
  Complete set of Greek fonts matching CM

Kerkis  http://www.ctan.org/pkg/kerkis
  Sans-serif Greek fonts to match the URW Bookman

dejavu http://www.ctan.org/pkg/dejavu
  LaTeX support for the DejaVu fonts

Epigrafica http://www.ctan.org/pkg/epigrafica
  Epigrafica is forked from the development of the MgOpen font
  Cosmetica, which is a similar design to Optima and includes Greek.

GFS fonts http://www.ctan.org/pkg/gfs
  Fonts from The Greek Font Society
  (Antonis Tsolomitis, George D. Matthiopoulos)

txfontsb http://www.ctan.org/pkg/txfontsb
  Extensions to txfonts, using GNU Freefont

grkfinst http://www.ctan.org/pkg/grkfinst

  plug-in for fontinst, for installing Greek Type 1 fonts


Others
------

teubner http://www.ctan.org/pkg/teubner
  Philological typesetting of classical Greek

hyphenation
  hyphenation-greek http://www.ctan.org/pkg/hyphenation-greek
  elhyphen http://www.ctan.org/pkg/elhyphen



Developers
==========

Apostolos Syropoulos no longer works on/for 8-bit LaTeX.

====================================================  =====================
Alexej Kryukov <basileia@yandex.ru>                   grkfinst
Antonis Tsolomitis <antonis.tsolomitis@gmail.com>     gfs
Claudio Beccari <claudio.beccari@gmail.com>           teubner
Dimitrios Filippou <dimitrios.ap.filippou@gmail.com>  inputenc, hyphenation
Günter Milde <milde@users.sf.net>                     lgrx
Heiko Oberdiek <heiko.oberdiek@googlemail.com>        hyperref
Javier Bezos <listas@tex-tipografia.com>              babel
Leonard Michlmayr <leonard.michlmayr@gmail.com>       textgreek
Pavel Farář <pavel.farar@centrum.cz>                  dejavu
Ross Moore <ross.moore@mq.edu.au>                     xunicode
Will Robertson <wspr81@gmail.com>                     EUENC
Elie Roux <elie.roux@telecom-bretagne.eu>             EUENC
Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny@eglug.org>                  EUENC
Wolfgang Jeltsch <wolfgang@cs.ioc.ee>                 ucs
====================================================  =====================
