[tex-live] Howto include unicode character?

[Michael A. Peters]

Neal Becker wrote:
> I have recent texlive. 
> 
> \documentclass[10pt,a4paper,english]{article}
> \usepackage{ucs}
> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> \begin{document}
> What is π
> \end{document}
> 
> I get:
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> \u-default-960 #1->\textpi 
>                            
> l.5 What is π
>               
> ? 
> ! Emergency stop.
> \u-default-960 #1->\textpi 
> 
> Any clues?

Old post, I know - but I had a similar problem and found a solution. I 
found this message in my mail archive when searching for a solution.

You need to specify to babel that you are using greek.

IE - in my case, I added this to the preamble:

\usepackage[polutonikogreek,english]{babel}

Then where I had the greek text -

\selectlanguage{greek}

Things worked perfectly.
Also note I added the psgreek package (not part of TeXLive but on CTAN) 
to choose a nice greek font I liked.

Anyway, I'm guessing you have found a solution you like, but since I did 
not see the babel solution on the list, I thought I'd reply so it's there.