[tex-live] problems with non-final sigma

[Tigran Aivazian]

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004, Vladimir Volovich wrote:

> "TA" == Tigran Aivazian writes:
> 
>  TA> I wish it was that easy. Yes, that was the first thing I tried
>  TA> but it still produced the final sigma. But the same \char'163
>  TA> followed by another letter produced the non-final sigma.
> 
> uh, then put {} after that char - it will suppress the ligature...
> 

Of course I tried that as well (2 months ago) and it didn't work either.
If it was that easy then Apostolos Syropoulos (the author of Babel/Greek 
option) would have been able to solve it... As I said, this is a complex 
fundamental problem and I tried many possibilities that I could think of 
(with my modest 10 years experience in TeX/LaTeX).

No, it is something more fundamental, like catcode redefining or something 
like that, which I don't fully understand (but I am sure someone does).

So, so far, there seems to be NO way to force a non-final sigma in a Greek
text, therefore I suggest to remove the context-sensitive logic from
Babel/Greek language definition because it introduces this serious bug.  
I.e. unless someone does come up with a working way to display a non-final
sigma.

Kind regards
Tigran