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I typically have my keyboard set up to use multiple alphabets, toggling with alt+shift; I use American English and Greek most frequently, followed by occasionally Japanese with Anthy, and occasionally Cyrillic. It works very well in almost every program.

However, Scribus, which is otherwise very decent layout software, refuses to recognize Greek. I really need that λ! Am I missing a package, or is there something else I need to do? The space isn't even filled with a filler character, it just remains blank.

This alphabet is awfully important to engineers, so I would be very surprised if there was no solution.

Update: I have determine that the π key consistently works fine, apparently on all fonts; but even on Neohellenic, it is the only one. Is something weird going on with font processing?

I have now attempted this on two completely physically separate machines, with different hardware, and gotten the same result. I typically use alt+shift to switch layouts, via Mint 19's keyboard manager. Doing so works on literally every other program I've tried, on both machines. However, Scribus, on both machines, ceases accepting input until I switch back to en mode. In gr, the only key that works is π; all others have no effect.

Symbol insertion works reasonably well, but this is a non-solution if I'm to attempt to type anything in the Hellenic alphabet.

Michael Macha
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I'm pretty sure that Scribus does work with the Greek keyboard layout. (But I cannot test, since I don't have the keyboard layout installed and cannot write Greek...)

Luckily, in a side note, you describe your issue as: "it stays blank". In that case, I guess that the default font (or the font you have picked does not contain the Greek glyphs (letters). Can you try with a different font? If possible, a boring one with lot of glyphs...

And if you only need a lambda (or single "scientific" letters from the Greek alphabet) you can always use "insert > glyph"... (you can create a set of often used letters in there...)

In your coments below you have now specified the font you are using and I got tempted to try it out. (The hardest part being: find out how to switch keyboard when you have no Desktop Environment...)

I have a Debian Testing system with the current stable release of Scribus and this is the result:

using the greek keyboard in scribus with debian

This should be pretty close to what should be able to achieve with Ubuntu.

My conclusion: Scribus does work with a Greek font...
With the information you have currently provided, I don't see a reason why it should not work on your system, too.
So, you need to provide further information, or try to get it to work with the mindset that on the Scribus side everything is fine (sometimes, when one has doubts about the outcome, some small "errors" sneak in...).

Just one more information from my side: I've switched the keyboard layout with setxkbmap -layout gr: You might want to try this, in the case your keyboard layout manager does not work well with Scribus...

a.l.e
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  • I have successfully added a λ with the trick provided, but I can confirm that it has nothing to do with the font. Neohellenic has the same problem, and that is pretty exclusively a Greek font. I appreciate the help, but this isn't really a full solution as I may need to type something Greek at some point, and the insert > glyph workaround is going to be awfully inefficient. – Michael Macha Sep 18 '18 at 22:20
  • I just discovered something that lends weight to your idea. For some reason, "π" works fine. It's the rest of the keyboard that is without effect. This is also true for Neohellenic, though, which is the odd part. – Michael Macha Sep 18 '18 at 22:41
  • I've edited my answer above according to the new informations you gave: now, I can get the Greek glyphs to show on keystrokes in Scribus 1.4 – a.l.e Sep 19 '18 at 08:27
  • I'll attempt that when i'm back at that machine, and will report back. I have another machine to try it on, too. – Michael Macha Sep 19 '18 at 17:30
  • I attempted to do this on a second machine, wholly independent from the first, and am getting the same behavior. Your method of using setxkbmap did not work for me; every other program did switch, but not Scribus. Scribus remained keyboard-deaf. I'm going to update my question with further details. – Michael Macha Sep 20 '18 at 01:39
  • Hold on, I may have hit something. Everything is rendering in the exact same font, that may be the problem! Let me dig a little further. Thanks for all your help. – Michael Macha Sep 20 '18 at 01:55
  • OK, my question is effectively solved; my problem is tangential to this. I can in fact add text normally via the "Edit Text" option, but it all renders in a specific bland font, which may add up to me misunderstanding how to use Scribus. (Ten years ago I used this Quark-Express stuff quite a bit, but that's a long time to forget!) Again, thanks for the help. – Michael Macha Sep 20 '18 at 02:08
  • The default way for editing text is by double clicking on the frame and entering the edit mode. "Edit text" is to be used for cases where the in-frame editing is not practical (skewed text, ...). Sadly, many tutorials still show the story editor... If you have some time you can have a look at http://write.flossmanuals.net/scribus/hands-on/ ... it helps understanding how Scribus works. – a.l.e Sep 20 '18 at 07:12