Re: exporting α/β to latex/pdf

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

"Clément B." <clement@inventati.org> writes:

>> The *easiest* solution is to just say \alpha and \beta in the org file
>> instead of α and β. But biting the bullet and adopting XeTeX or LuaTeX is
>> probably the *best* way to go (he says without ever having used either...)
>
> For those who stick with pdflatex, you can also use "α" directly in
> the org document, and define
>
> #+latex_header: \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
> #+latex_header: \declareunicodecharacter{03b1}{α}
>
> Provided your file is indeed encoded in utf-8 (but why would you use
> any other encoding?)
>
> This simply tells the compiler to bind "α" to the unicode character
> "greek small letter alpha" (U+03B1). If there is a lot of unicode in
> the document, XeTeX/LuaTeX are definitely better choices.
>
>

But that's not quite right: you end up with a circular definition (and
both pdflatex and plain latex think so: they infloop).

One way to fix it using a math alpha:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+LATEX_HEADER: \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{03b1}{\(\alpha\)}
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Another is to use \textalpha and a package that defines it:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage{textgreek}
#+LATEX_HEADER: \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{03b1}{\textalpha}
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

but then you have to install the package (and possibly some fonts as
well).

Nick

PS. So happy that gmane is back :-)