Easy installation of the Greek Option

of Babel on teTeX

Applies to all Unix/Linux installations

We take advantage of the capability of teTeX to use a local tree.

Download the file texmf.local.tar.gz (2.5Mb) or texmf.local.tar.bz2 (2.2Mb) (you may need to Shift+Click on the latter link)
Become root and move the file in /usr/share/ (or in the directory where you have the texmf tree of your system) and unpack them:

mv texmf.local.tar.gz /usr/share/
cd /usr/share/
tar -xzvf texmf.local.tar.gz
chown -R root.root texmf.local/
rm -f texmf.local.tar.gz

mv texmf.local.tar.bz2 /usr/share/
cd /usr/share/
bunzip2 texmf.local.tar.bz2
tar -xvf texmf.local.tar
chown -R root.root texmf.local/
rm -f texmf.local.tar.bz2

If you already have a local tree go to the next step. Otherwise edit the file /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf with your favorite editor. Here for simplicity we use pico.

pico -w /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf

we make two changes here to inform the system that we now have a local tree.
Change
% A place for local additions to a "standard" texmf tree. For example:
% TEXMFLOCAL = /usr/share/texmf.local
To
% A place for local additions to a "standard" texmf tree. For example:
TEXMFLOCAL = /usr/share/texmf.local

And a little later in the file
Change
TEXMF = $TEXMFMAIN
To
%TEXMF = $TEXMFMAIN
TEXMF = {$HOMETEXMF,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}
(that is comment out the TEXMF variable and define it as above)
Save the file (Control X)

Run texhash

Our system now knows of the existence of our local tree including all files needed for proper support of Greek.
The only think left is to incorporate the greek hyphenation patterns to the LaTeX's format file.

cd /tmp
initex latex.ltx
cd /usr/share/texmf/web2c/
mv latex.fmt latex.fmt.bak
mv /tmp/latex.fmt /usr/share/texmf/web2c/

If the initex command fails then you must ask a TeXguru.

We are now done. Your system has the standard Greek fonts of C. Beccari with the support from the Babel package by A. Syropoulos.
It also contains the font family Kerkis of the Department of Mathematics of the University of the Aegean. Please read the licence restrictions for Kerkis in the previous link and of the Babel Package. All restrictions imposed in the README files of the original TeXgreek.tar.gz file located here apply!

If you had greek support from a previous installation you must remove the stale bitmaps that may exist on your system. They are usually located in /var/lib/texmf/pk/ You may safely remove all the contents of this directory.

Note that this installation has an additional advantage. It allows you to upgrade your teTeX installation without worring about greek support.
After an upgrade you just have to follow the steps starting with the editing of the texmf.cnf file. You should prefer to save new fonts and style files etc in the texmf.local tree to preserve the possibility of a teTeX upgrade in the future.

A. Tsolomitis

last updated 18/Apr/2003