Typeset Greek Words

Question

My question is essentially the same as that found here. I would like to be able to typeset a handful of Greek words.

Here's a MWE:

\documentclass{book}

%\usepackage[LGR,T1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
%\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}
\newcommand{\textgreek}[1]{\begingroup\fontencoding{LGR}\selectfont#1\endgroup}

%\usepackage{textcomp}
\newcommand{\theos}{\ensuremath{\theta\epsilon\acute o\sigma}\ }

\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}

\item Latin version (not what I want): theos 
\item Math version (in italics, but otherwise fine): \theos.
\item Solution from @egreg (does not work for me): \textgreek{θεός}

\end{itemize}
\end{document}

Depending which packages I uncomment, I get different errors.

• Everything uncommented:
  • LaTeX Error: File `LGR.def' not found.
  • LaTeX Error: File `LGRx.def' not found. (if I change it to LGRx)
• Without LGR and textcomp:
  • Package babel Error: Unknown option `greek'.
  • LaTeX Error: Encoding scheme `LGR' unknown.
  • Package inputenc Error: Unicode char θ (U+3B8)(inputenc) not set up for use with LaTeX (and similar for other characters)
• Without LGR, babel, and textcomp
  • LaTeX Error: Encoding scheme 'LGR' unknown.
  • Package inputenc Error: Unicode char θ (U+3B8)(inputenc) not set up for use with LaTeX (and similar for other characters)
• Without the \textgreek newcommand, and textcomp
  • File `LGR.def' not found.

You get the idea. I can copy the utf8 greek letters into the .tex, but can't get them into my pdf. I'm running PDFLaTeX on Texmaker on Ubuntu.

---

Follow-up to comments.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel} 

\begin{document} \textgreek{θεός} 

\end{document}

Returns error: Package babel Error: Unknown option `greek'.

If I run the same with LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX, it ignores the inputenc, says that \textgreek is undefined, has the same babel error, and does not output the greek letters.

How would I make LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX work with greek? I've not come across them before, but see that they are an option in Texmaker.

Answer 1

You might want to consider the betababel package. Apart from the greek letters, it also has convenient shortcuts for the various diacritics. Example from the documentation:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\usepackage[polutonikogreek,english]{babel}
\usepackage[english]{betababel}

\begin{document}

Some regular text

\begin{betacode}
*)/ANDRA MOI E)/NNEPE, *MOU=SA, POLU/TROPON, O(\S MA/LA POLLA\
PLA/GXQH, E)PEI\ *TROI/HS I(ERO\N PTOLI/EQRON E)/PERSE:
\end{betacode}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Okay, so the issue was (at least partly) that I didn't have the babel greek packages installed.

So in terminal I ran this (from here):

$ sudo apt-cache search texlive greek
$ sudo apt-get install texlive-lang-greek

Then with pdfLaTeX I was able to run the following:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{cmap}
\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}


\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
\item \textgreek{theta} 
\item \textgreek{θεός}

\end{itemize}
\end{document}

with almost expected results.

The greek changes the font somewhat. So the θεός is rendered with a curly theta. I guess this is just a different font, because when I copy and paste it from the pdf output, it looks exactly the same.