betababel: You haven't defined the language polutonikogreek yet

Question

For many years I used the package betababel to combine Latin and Greek letters in one document, but since version 2014.20141024-1 of texlive-lang-greek, the simple example

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{betababel}

\begin{document}
\bcode{lo/gos}
\end{document}

(which worked with the previous version) produces this error when compiling with pdflatex:

Package babel Error: You haven't defined the language polutonikogreek yet.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Answer 1

I do not know if this runs into some clashes, but as betababel loads babel as well, it should be safe to do:

% arara: pdflatex

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[polutonikogreek, ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[ngerman]{betababel}

\begin{document}
    \bcode{lo/gos}
\end{document}

As written in your output, the babel option polutonikogreek was missing. As betababel does not offer this option, just load it via the original babel.

Answer 2

The packages betababel does not seem to have received updates in the last decade(s). I strongly discourage the use of it. (I could not get it up and running on a TexLive 2021 installation.)

I recommend to directly write Greek in your Tex file. Use Greek stickers on your keyboard and select a Greek layout in your operating system.

An example would look like

\documentclass{article}

% Set the font (output) encodings
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

% \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} is no longer required (since 2018)

% Greek-specific commands
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents

\begin{abstract}
\textgreek{Αυτή είναι μια σύντομη περιγραφή του θέματος}
\end{abstract}

Latin text can also be added to the document.
\end{document}

adapted from Overleaf Greek introduction