While studying the Luwian language, I have found that I often spend time in LaTeX editors writing up documents that have interlinear translations and glosses for study purposes, allowing me to work through each line piece by piece and take notes on different parts of speech and other points of interest. As I continued, however, I found that I was increasingly stymied by a lack of a straightforward way to insert Luwian hieroglyphs into such a document. For this reason, I created the LuwianType LaTeX package, which does exactly this.
The LuwianType package is a LaTeX package based on the Google Luwian hieroglyphic font which aims to create a simple way of typing in Hieroglyphic Luwian. It is platform-agnostic and allows the user to not only easily insert Anatolian hieroglyphs into a PDF, but also allows for formatting in ways which can replicate real-world Luwian texts. The package can also be used with the expex package for interlinear translation and glossing, and examples are given in the documentation which demonstrate such a usage. Its most important features are the ability to insert hieroglyphic signs without needing to either search manually for a sign in a list or to memorize/reference Unicode codes, and some user-friendly commands which can create boustrophedon lines and glyph stacks. Each sign is accessed using an uppercase command such as \SA, based on the Latin or syllabic value of each sign according to the Unicode standard, which is included in the documentation. In fact, the package is constructed in such a way that a user could even change out the font for a different font that they prefer with little to no disruption, simply by changing out the .ttf file in the package for the font of their choice (using the same name of LuwianFont.ttf).
Using this method, one can comfortably type in Luwian as shown in the image, and generate lines of hieroglyphic text with relatively minimal effort. Because it plays nicely with the expex package, it is possible to create interlinear glosses without dealing with the tedium of creating and aligning tables in Word or other WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editors by simply feeding complete lines of hieroglyphic text into the expex template. For many users, this should greatly expedite the process of creating documents using Luwian hieroglyphs, and should improve the overall experience such that new learners have another tool in their toolbox for studying this fascinating language. The package may also be found on the CTAN LaTeX package repository.
To access the package please follow the link.
Ancient Anatolia Network
