# What LGR-encoded Greek fonts are available?

How many and what are the Greek fonts used (without using fontspec) with pdflatex + option italian babel?

For example, I use greek.ancient typing with the latin charaters. See this MWE:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[greek.ancient,italian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
Dal greco\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
br\'aqistos
\end{otherlanguage*}(brachistos), e\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
qr\'onos
\end{otherlanguage*}(chronos), tempo.
\end{document}


Please, is it possible to have a full list to type in greek font, as from my MWE, but not in math-mode, to put into <....>, or into \usepackage[<....>,italian]{babel}?

• @Raaja Dear Raaja, your link and your request for closure is absolutely not compatible with my request. – Sebastiano Jun 23 at 14:56
• sorry, retracted my close vote. – Raaja Jun 23 at 15:12
• @Raaja Don't worry about it. I make mistakes so many times a day. – Sebastiano Jun 23 at 15:17
• Thanks for the understanding :) – Raaja Jun 23 at 16:48

## 4 Answers

David has listed quite a few possibilities. Here I want to highlight two that I find particularly interesting.

# Gentium

Gentium is an award winning font that supports a wide array of Latin scripts as well as Greek an Cyrillic. You can use it with:

\usepackage{gentium}


Note that I had to use "c" instead of "s" to get the correct final sigma (thanks to @Thérèse for spotting this).

# GFS Didot

GFS Didot is a free and faithful digital version of Didot's Greek, a.k.a. "apla". GFS has paired the Greek glyphs with Palatino like Latin glyphs, which I do not particularly like. I like the combination with Palatino, though:

\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\usepackage{substitutefont}
\substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{udidot}
\linespread{1.05}


The sc option can be replaced with osf to get old-style/lining figures. Some might claim that Pagella is the better choice for Palatino, but I have preferences.

# Times

In the comments you mention, that you are using newtxtext, i.e. Times, as text font and that you like GFS Didot. Unfortunately, GFS Didot is to dark compared to Times, but you can try other fonts, e.g.

\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{substitutefont}
\substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{txr}


Here the Times plus GFS Didot combination, that I do not recommend, with full example code:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[greek.ancient,italian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{substitutefont}
\substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{udidot}
\begin{document}
Dal greco\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
br\'aqistos
\end{otherlanguage*}(brachistos), e\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
qr\'onos
\end{otherlanguage*}(chronos), tempo.
\end{document}


• In the meantime, I really thank you for your help. I use newtxtext and other mathematical packages as text: example mtpro2 v. lite. I like the second example very much, but for me it is important not to change both the mathematical font and the text font. – Sebastiano Jun 23 at 20:57
• With Gentium, you need to use c rather than s for final sigma. Not sure why that’s not the case for your second example. – Thérèse Jun 23 at 21:00
• @Thérèse thanks for spotting this. This might be a bug in the LGR-metrics for Gentium. – Ralf Stubner Jun 23 at 21:14
• @Sebastiano See the update if you want to stick with a Times-like font. – Ralf Stubner Jun 23 at 21:15
• @Sebastiano See the update for a full example. I used your code and added some packages to change fonts ... – Ralf Stubner Jun 23 at 21:42
\$ find /usr/local/texlive/2019/texmf-dist -name lgr\*fd | wc -l
42


so there are 42 font families in texlive 2019 already set up for Greek LGR encoding. If you include use of tools such as ofttotfm than would let you convert otf fonts to an LGR encoded subset there will be hundreds if not thousands of available fonts.

The list from running find is

./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrcmr.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrcmro.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrcmss.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrcmtt.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlcmss.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlcmtt.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlmr.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlmro.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlmss.fd
./tex/latex/cbfonts-fd/lgrlmtt.fd
./tex/latex/cm-lgc/lgrfcm.fd
./tex/latex/cm-lgc/lgrfcs.fd
./tex/latex/cm-lgc/lgrfct.fd
./tex/latex/comfortaa/lgrfco.fd
./tex/latex/droid/lgrfdm.fd
./tex/latex/droid/lgrfdr.fd
./tex/latex/droid/lgrfds.fd
./tex/latex/epigrafica/lgrepigrafica.fd
./tex/latex/gentium-tug/lgrgentium.fd
./tex/latex/gfsartemisia/lgrartemisia.fd
./tex/latex/gfsartemisia/lgrartemisiaeuler.fd
./tex/latex/gfsbaskerville/lgrgfsbaskerville.fd
./tex/latex/gfsbodoni/lgrbodoni.fd
./tex/latex/gfscomplutum/lgrcomplutum.fd
./tex/latex/gfsdidot/lgrudidot.fd
./tex/latex/gfsneohellenic/lgrneohellenic.fd
./tex/latex/gfsporson/lgrporson.fd
./tex/latex/gfssolomos/lgrsolomos.fd
./tex/latex/kerkis/lgrkfn.fd
./tex/latex/kerkis/lgrmak.fd
./tex/latex/kerkis/lgrmaksf.fd
./tex/latex/lxfonts/lgrllcmss.fd
./tex/latex/lxfonts/lgrllcmtt.fd
./tex/latex/miama/lgrfmm.fd
./tex/latex/opensans/lgrfos.fd
./tex/latex/opensans/lgrfosj.fd
./tex/latex/tempora/lgrtempora-tlf.fd
./tex/latex/tempora/lgrtempora-tosf.fd
./tex/latex/txfontsb/lgrtxr.fd
./tex/latex/txfontsb/lgrtxrc.fd
./tex/latex/txfontsb/lgrtxry.fd
./tex/latex/txfontsb/lgrtxryc.fd

• David, excuse me, but I use MikTeX with a old OS Windows 7 32-bit. I'm unprepared for your answer, which I vote in positive. – Sebastiano Jun 22 at 21:51
• @Sebastiano nothing in this answer is system specific, well miktex may have a slightly different set of available packages but that is unlikely. – David Carlisle Jun 22 at 21:52
• Now I have understood your answer through the answer given by the user. You have entered a list that uses all Greek characters. Either you install them separately, i.e. they are not included in the LaTeX distribution, or some uses fontspec. I should see them one by one if I like them and I should also learn how to use them. – Sebastiano Jun 23 at 21:09
• @Sebastiano you use them yourself, in your example you load LGR artemisia \substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{artemisia} that works because ./tex/latex/gfsartemisia/lgrartemisia.fd exists in your system, so that list is a list of other fonts you can try. – David Carlisle Jun 23 at 22:12
• Unfortunately not everyting that claims to implement LGR does implement the full set of LGR glyphs, so one needs to check the output if one wants to typeset ploytonic greek – Frank Mittelbach Jun 24 at 8:47

At the answer of the user @RalfStubner and best user @David Carlisle I add:

## porson (greek)

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[greek.ancient,italian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{substitutefont}
\substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{porson}
\begin{document}
Dal greco\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
br\'aqistos
\end{otherlanguage*}(brachistos), e\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
qr\'onos
\end{otherlanguage*}(chronos), tempo.
\end{document}


## Artemisia

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage[greek.ancient,italian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{newtxtext}
\usepackage{substitutefont}
\substitutefont{LGR}{\rmdefault}{artemisia}%%%%% You must delete from %%%lgrartemisia.fd, lgr to have only artemisia. Same for every font of the list of %%%@David Carlisle.
\begin{document}
Dal greco\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
br\'aqistos
\end{otherlanguage*}(brachistos), e\begin{otherlanguage*}{greek}
qr\'onos
\end{otherlanguage*}(chronos), tempo.
\end{document}


If there are others I can add, I am glad you can edit my answer. Greetings and thanks to all of you.

The list of Greek fonts on CTAN is a good resource. Not all of them are Type 1 fonts in the LGR encoding, which is what you are looking for, but the links there will take you to the documentation of each.

At a glance, the usable options appear to be: the GFS fonts, Kerkis (a companion for Bookman/TeX Gyre Schola), Tempora or txfontsb (companions for Times), Cochineal, Gentium, DejaVu, Libertine and Miama. Several are extensions of Computer Modern, but you would get those by switching to cmr.

By some oversight, lxfonts and opensans are not in the list of Greek fonts even though both come in LGR. Neither is likely to be usable for you: lxfonts is intended for slides, and Open Sans supports only monotonic Greek.

Epigraphica looked promising (as an extension of Optima/URW Classico), but seems to have been abandoned in 2007 without ever including polytonic support. I would try Lingua Franca instead.

• Thank you very much for your support and suggestions: +1. – Sebastiano Jun 24 at 20:49