From the XeTeX mailing list: [XeTeX] Greek XeLaTeX
Hans,
here's a challenging question from the XeTeX mailing list. Somebody
gave a challenge of how one writes units or rather: if it is possible
to get rid of latin keyboard entirely, for example if one is able to
retype \includegraphics[width=10cm,scale=5]{...} in arabic/possibly
greek interface without using the latin keyboard)?
In either case I think that one should convince the author to take
ConTeXt instead of LaTeX to rewrite the commands ...
Mojca
2010/10/12 Alexandros Gotsis
Dear friends,
I am trying to "greekify" XeLaTex in order to make it easier for greek writers to use. I have translated almost all the commands (e.g., instead of \begin{document} I can use \αρχή{κειμένου}, etc.) that I could think of and made new article, book etc. classes with the greek commands. These new classes just renew the commands etc. and they work rather well. There are a few errors still that I try to figure out, but there are also a couple of things that I do not know how to do and, therefore, ask your advise/help.
1. I could replace almost all commands of (Xe)LaTeX, but I can do nothing with the very first one: \documentclass{}! Is there a way to change the name of this command so that the XeLaTeX engine still understands it? I am looking for solutions that will not include any extra (latin) text in the source file, as this would defy the purpose.
2. While I have changed the names for "Chapter", "Figure", the dates, the numbers, capitalisation etc. (thanks for all this go to the work of Syropoylos in Xanthi), I do not know how to change things as, e.g., [c] (center) to [κ] (κέντρο), the length units (from mm το χ etc.). For the time being I would not change anything in the math environments.
3. I do not know how to change the alphabetical order in "makeindex". Usually the accented vowels follow the corresponding unaccented ones in a greek index,. This is not the case for "makeindex", as it follows the unicode listing. which is defined differently, and the result looks wrong in a greek index list (ευρετήριο).
The idea behind the changes is that a writer of greek text (or arab, chinese etc.) should not be obliged to change his/her computer keyboard to latin for the commands and back again for the text. Also the names of the commands would be more transparent for non-english speakers.
followed by: On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 13:54, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
Am Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:13:41 +0200 schrieb Khaled Hosny:
The idea behind the changes is that a writer of greek text (or arab, chinese etc.) should not be obliged to change his/her computer keyboard to latin for the commands and back again for the text. Also the names of the commands would be more transparent for non-english speakers.
Well I don't know much about ConTeXt, but at first ConTeXt is a rather monolitic and selfcontained format. It doesn't have to handle lots of packages. Also I have some doubts that this localised formats translates really everything down to units like mm or numbers to other scripts. Or is their an completly arabic counterpart to \includegraphics[width=10cm,scale=5]{...}?
... Mojca