I am trying to compile a long document in which I must add a couple of paragraphs with text in Ancient Greek, to be compiled with XeLaTeX.
The way I am doing this now is
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[polutonikogreek,english]{babel}
\newcommand{\greek}[1]{{\selectlanguage{polutonikogreek}#1}}
and then I have \greek{βάραθρον}
etc.
However, this is not producing any output with XeLaTeX. Using pdfLaTeX I do get the words in Ancient Greek in the text.
I have also noticed that a few words in French and Spanish I have don't show up properly either, regardless on whether I add spanish and french to the babel
options.
Unfortunately I must use XeLaTeX because of some complicated commands I have in the text.
Best Answer
With XeLaTeX you don't really need special support for Greek, if all you need are isolated words and don't care about hyphenation.
In case you want correct hyphenation for ancient Greek, you can use a main font that has support for the language, or choose a different one.
However,
babel
doesn't offer XeLaTeX support for ancient Greek, so you needpolyglossia
.