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I often use Greek letters in my LaTeX documents. To avoid unreadable source files with \alpha, \phi, etc., I use Unicode and Greek letters directly. This is easy to configure with commands like

\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{03B1}{\alpha}

For typing, I switch between english and Greek keyboard layouts.

Both LaTeX and Unicode recognizes variants for a few Greek letters

U+03C6 φ GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI: \varphi in LaTeX

U+03D5 ϕ GREEK PHI SYMBOL: \phi in LaTeX

U+03B5 ε GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON: \varepsilon in LaTeX

U+03F5 ϵ GREEK LUNATE EPSILON SYMBOL: \epsilon in LaTeX

Although, my Greek layout does not proposes multiple variants for these letters.

Does someone know an appropriate way to input a specific variant of these Greek letters?

jorispilot
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1 Answers1

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I've finally found a satisfactory solution. As suggested by dirkt the idea is to customize the keyboard layout, but I used the compose key. I just had to add the entry in my .XCompose file:

<Multi_key> <Greek_sigma> : "ς" U03C2 # Final sigma; \varsigma in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_beta> : "ϐ" U03D0 # Curled beta
<Multi_key> <Greek_theta> : "ϑ" U03D1 # Script Theta; \vartheta in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_phi> : "ϕ" U03D5 # Phi symbol; \phi in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_pi> : "ϖ" U03D6 # Omega Pi; \varpi in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_gamma> : "Ϝ" U03DC # Digamma; \digamma in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_kappa> : "ϰ" U03D0 # Scpipt Kappa; \varkappa in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_rho> : "ϱ" U03D1 # Tailed Rho; \varrho in LaTeX
<Multi_key> <Greek_epsilon> : "ϵ" U03F5 # Lunate Epsilon; \epsilon in LaTeX

When the Greek layout is on, I just type CapsLock+f to produce ϕ instead of φ. Easy! (My Compose key is mapped on CapsLock.)

jorispilot
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