Ancient Greek hyphenation in LuaLaTeX

Question

Can anybody tell me the current state of hyphenation patterns in LuaLaTeX, especially with regard to Ancient Greek?

I searched here on tex.sx and on the web. There are many mailing lists discussing particular problems, but all is very scattered. There is also some documentation on CTAN for hyph-utf8 but it lacks information for LuaLaTeX (or I missed this bit).

So, what should I do if I want to typeset Ancient Greek and want to have the text properly hyphenated? Or should I wait for further developments?

Answer 1

I made this experiment. It's necessary to kill the action of \greektext in order to avoid setting the font encoding to LGR.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[polutonikogreek]{babel}

\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Old Standard}

\let\greektext\relax

% very narrow columns!
\columnsep=2cm
\textwidth=\dimexpr7\columnsep+8pt\relax
\hfuzz=\maxdimen % no overfull \hbox message

\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{8}
\noindent\hspace{0pt}%
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
τίς τ᾽ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;
Λητοῦς καὶ Διὸς υἱός: ὃ γὰρ βασιλῆϊ χολωθεὶς
νοῦσον ἀνὰ στρατὸν ὄρσε κακήν, ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοί,
οὕνεκα τὸν Χρύσην ἠτίμασεν ἀρητῆρα
Ἀτρεΐδης: ὃ γὰρ ἦλθε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν
λυσόμενός τε θύγατρα φέρων τ᾽ ἀπερείσι᾽ ἄποινα,
στέμματ᾽ ἔχων ἐν χερσὶν ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος
χρυσέῳ ἀνὰ σκήπτρῳ, καὶ λίσσετο πάντας Ἀχαιούς,
Ἀτρεΐδα δὲ μάλιστα δύω, κοσμήτορε λαῶν:
Ἀτρεΐδαι τε καὶ ἄλλοι ἐϋκνήμιδες Ἀχαιοί,
ὑμῖν μὲν θεοὶ δοῖεν Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχοντες
ἐκπέρσαι Πριάμοιο πόλιν, εὖ δ᾽ οἴκαδ᾽ ἱκέσθαι:
παῖδα δ᾽ ἐμοὶ λύσαιτε φίλην, τὰ δ᾽ ἄποινα δέχεσθαι,
ἁζόμενοι Διὸς υἱὸν ἑκηβόλον Ἀπόλλωνα.
\end{multicols}

\end{document}

The words are hyphenated at all feasible points, you can check if the hyphenation is correct.

Added December 2013

The babel-greek package has undergone several modifications. Now the correct way to call polutoniko and babel with XeLaTeX is to load babel after fontspec, so that the correct font encoding is guessed. There's apparently no need to kill \greektext any more.

I'll report only the first lines of the corrected example file:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Old Standard}
\usepackage[polutonikogreek]{babel}

% very narrow columns!
\columnsep=2cm
\textwidth=\dimexpr7\columnsep+8pt\relax
\hfuzz=\maxdimen % no overfull \hbox message

\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{8}
\noindent\hspace{0pt}%
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,

...

The output should be the same as before.