CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r-markdown
Ζι Βάγγο
Ζι Βάγγο

Reputation: 194

Writing Greek text in Rmarkdown

Hello guys I'm trying so hard to make a document in greek with Rmarkdown, cause I dont want to learn all the Latex commands and it's very easy to actually make a document that seems like a Latex document with Rmarkdown. Really my only problem is the language. I've got so many errors and I've managed to handle them until now. Bellow I give you a simple example of what Rstudio produces. The problem is that it doesn't print any greek letter but no error occured. I really dont know what's going on. 

---
title: "Title"
author: "Me"
fontsize: 12pt
header-includes:
   - \usepackage{fontspec}  
   - \usepackage[english,greek]{babel}
   - \newcommand{\en}{\selectlanguage{english}}
   - \newcommand{\gr}{\selectlanguage{greek}}

output:
   pdf_document:
      latex_engine: xelatex
---


{\gr{Αυτά είναι ελληνικά}}

I'm using tinytex in Rstudio with session info :

R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service 
Pack 1

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Greek_Greece.1253  
LC_CTYPE=Greek_Greece.1253    
LC_MONETARY=Greek_Greece.1253
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                  
LC_TIME=Greek_Greece.1253    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     
datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.5.0  backports_1.1.2 magrittr_1.5    
rprojroot_1.3-2 htmltools_0.3.6
[6] tools_3.5.0     yaml_2.2.0      Rcpp_0.12.18    
stringi_1.2.4   rmarkdown_1.10 
[11] knitr_1.20      stringr_1.3.1   digest_0.6.15   
evaluate_0.11

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1775

Answers (2)

Ζι Βάγγο
Ζι Βάγγο

Reputation: 194

First of all thank you for your immediate response, and your advices are much appreciated. Well I tried to update the packages you said via the tlmgr_update() command (from tinytex package), I copy-pasted your last code and the error below is produced:

processing file: untitled.Rmd
output file: untitled.knit.md

! Package fontspec Error: The font "GFS Didot" cannot be 
found.

Error: Failed to compile untitled.tex. See untitled.log for 
more info.
Execution halted

I even did tlmgr_update("GFS") cause I saw that the font you used was from this package.

Upvotes: 0

Ralf Stubner
Ralf Stubner

Reputation: 26823

It is crucial that you use a font that actually contains Greek glyphs. The following works for me when the input document is saved in UTF-8:

---
header-includes:
   - \usepackage[english,greek]{babel}
   - \newcommand{\en}[1]{{\selectlanguage{english}#1}}
   - \newcommand{\gr}[1]{{\selectlanguage{greek}#1}}
mainfont: GFS Didot
output:
   pdf_document:
      latex_engine: xelatex
---


\gr{Αυτά είναι ελληνικά}   \en{The gick brown fox jumps over the lazyy dog.}

I removed \usepackage{fontspec}, since that is done automatically when xelatex is used. I have also updated your language switching commands to take an argument, since pandoc does not like the {\command text} style.

However, it would be more conventional to combine xelatex with polyglossia instead of babel. That's what pandocdoes when you use the lang feature:

---
lang: el
mainfont: GFS Didot
output:
   pdf_document:
      latex_engine: xelatex
---


Αυτά είναι ελληνικά [the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog]{.class lang="en"}

Αυτά είναι ελληνικά

::::: {.class lang="en"}

Here is a paragraph.

And another.

:::::

Αυτά είναι ελληνικά

Note that you might have to update fontspec/mathspec/polyglossia to avoid this problem.

Upvotes: 1

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