[tex-live] Multilingual LaTeX: Greek, English, and UTF-8

[Alexej Kryukov]

On Tuesday 13 September 2005 00:49, W. Borgert wrote:
>
> Is there a way to let LaTeX do this automatically?  In the input
> file, the characters are entirely different, so in theory it
> should be possible for LaTeX to deduce the right mapping, right?

Well, you question is a good chance for me to promote Omega and
my antomega package :) Standard tex compiler implies too many
limitations related with its 8-bit codepages. Normally, you have
to switch between output codepages manually. If you don't
like this, you should use Unicode both in your input and output.
This is possible with omega/lambda, but not with tex/latex.

> Why is the command \textlatin{} not necessary for Russian or
> Ukranian text mixed with English?  It should be similar to
> Greek, but works without the additional command.

Because standard Cyrillic encodings contain both Cyrillic and
Latin characters, while the de facto Greek encoding contains
only Greek ones. You know, there are too many accented characters
in polytonic Greek, and so after mapping all them there is just no 
place remaining for Latin characters.

However, support for Latin characters in Cyrillic codepages is
also limited: you still can't type language-specific symbols
(like German double "s" or the "ae" ligature) without switching
to a Latin codepage (e. g. T1).

-- 
Regards,
Alexej Kryukov <akrioukov at newmail dot ru>

Moscow State University
Historical Faculty