greekbook

Write in Markdown. Get a properly typeset Greek book or thesis.
PDF, PDF/A and EPUB, without LaTeX and without fighting Word.

▶ Try it in your browser · Documentation (Greek) · Ελληνικά

Quick start · Writing · Templates · Greek typography

Greek text has rules that general-purpose tools get wrong. Word justifies Greek with rivers of white space because it does not hyphenate it. LaTeX does it right, but polyglossia, fontspec and biblatex are a steep climb for a student with a deadline. greekbook sits in between: you write plain Markdown, and it produces a book or thesis set with a modern typesetting engine (Typst) and with the Greek-specific rules built in.

$ pip install greekbook
$ greekbook new my-thesis --template thesis
$ greekbook build my-thesis --pdfa
✓ PDF: my-thesis/thesis.pdf  (0.4s)

Not a programmer?

Download the app, double-click it, and write. No Python, no terminal, no installation: Windows · macOS · step-by-step guide (Greek)

What you get

• Theses that pass the checklist. University cover page, declaration of originality, Greek and English abstracts, table of contents, lists of figures and tables, Roman-numbered front matter, per-chapter numbering (Σχήμα 2.1, Πίνακας 3.1, (2.4)), appendices lettered Α, Β, Γ, and PDF/A-2b output for institutional repositories.
• Citations from a .bib file in APA, IEEE, Harvard, Chicago, MLA, Vancouver or any CSL style: [@knuth1984, σ. 12].
• Math in LaTeX syntax ($\frac{a}{b}$), the notation students already know, rendered natively by Typst through a bundled mitex.
• Books and e-books. Literary templates with running heads, scene breaks, chapter numbers in Greek numerals (ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΟ Α΄), title, copyright and dedication pages, plus EPUB 3 with soft hyphens for e-readers that cannot hyphenate Greek.
• A linter for invisible mistakes: Latin letters hiding inside Greek words, a medial ς, unpaired quotes, citations missing from the bibliography, references to labels that don't exist, missing images.
• A live editor and Word import. greekbook serve opens an editor with the pages rendering next to your text; greekbook import turns a .docx into a project.
• Fast and self-contained: one pip install, no TeX distribution, fonts bundled, rebuilds in under a second, works offline. The browser demo runs the very same Python code in Pyodide, with Typst compiled to WebAssembly.

Quick start

$ greekbook new my-novel --template novel     # or: thesis
$ cd my-novel
$ greekbook watch                             # rebuilds the PDF on every save

A project is a folder:

my-thesis/
├── book.yaml              # title, author, template, university details
├── front/abstract.md      # front matter (unnumbered, Roman page numbers)
├── chapters/
│   ├── 01-eisagogi.md     # chapters, in filename order
│   └── 02-methodologia.md
├── appendix.md
├── figures/
└── references.bib

Or just type greekbook: a numbered menu asks what you want to write and opens the app.

Command	What it does
greekbook	Menu: new thesis / book / notes, import from Word, open the app
greekbook app [DIR]	The app in the browser: home screen, editor, settings form
greekbook new DIR -t thesis|novel	Start a project from a working example
greekbook build [DIR] [--epub] [--pdfa] [--open]	Build the PDF (and EPUB)
greekbook serve [DIR]	Local editor with live page preview
greekbook watch [DIR]	Rebuild on every change
greekbook import FILE.docx [DIR]	Turn a Word document into a project
greekbook validate [DIR] [--strict]	Check text, citations, references and images
greekbook doctor	Check the installation
greekbook templates	List the templates

Writing

Standard Markdown, plus the Pandoc conventions people already use for papers:

You write	You get
"text"	«text», nested quotes become «… “…” …»
--- / -- / ...	em dash —, en dash –, ellipsis …
# Εισαγωγή {#sec:intro}	a chapter you can reference with @sec:intro
# Παράρτημα {-}	an unnumbered heading
# Μέρος πρώτο {.part}	a part divider page (ΜΕΡΟΣ ΠΡΩΤΟ)
{#fig:map width=70%}	numbered figure, @fig:map → «Σχήμα 2.1»
a table followed by Table: Λεζάντα {#tbl:res}	numbered table with caption
$$ E = mc^2 $$ (eq:e)	numbered equation, @eq:e → «Εξίσωση (2.1)»
[@knuth1984, σ. 12], [@a; @b], @knuth1984	citations: parenthetical, grouped, in prose
στον Πίνακα [-@tbl:res]	the number only, so you can decline the noun yourself
Κείμενο[^1] / ^[inline note]	footnotes
--- between paragraphs	a scene break ⁂
\newpage	a page break

book.yaml reference

title: Βελτιστοποίηση διαδρομών οχημάτων
subtitle: Μεθευρετικές μέθοδοι
author: Όνομα Επώνυμο
template: thesis            # novel | classic | sepia | clean | academic | thesis
language: el                # el | en
page_size: A4               # A4, A5, B5, 6x9in, 148x210mm, …
front_matter: [front/abstract.md, front/abstract-en.md]
chapters: [chapters/01.md]  # optional; default: every chapters/*.md
appendices: [appendix.md]
bibliography: references.bib
citation_style: apa         # apa | ieee | harvard | chicago | chicago-notes | mla | vancouver | file.csl
toc: true
list_of_figures: true
list_of_tables: true
chapter_numbering: auto     # auto | greek (Α΄) | arabic | roman | words (Πρώτο) | none
math: latex                 # latex | typst
pdf_standard: a-2b          # 1.7 | a-2b | a-3b | ua-1
font: Libertinus Serif      # any installed or bundled font
font_size: 11pt
thesis:
  type: Διπλωματική Εργασία
  institution: …
  school: …
  department: …
  program: …
  student_id: "…"
  supervisor: …
  committee: [ … ]
  place: Αθήνα
  date: Ιούνιος 2026
  logo: figures/logo.png
  declaration: true
# books
publisher: …
year: "2026"
copyright: © 2026 …
dedication: …
epigraph: …

Unknown keys are rejected with a message that lists the valid ones, so typos never fail silently.

Templates

Template	For	Look
thesis	Bachelor/master theses	Liberation Serif (Times-compatible) 12 pt, 1.5 spacing, binding margin, cover page
academic	Papers, lecture notes	Computer Modern, numbered sections
novel	Fiction	Libertinus Serif, Greek-numeral chapters, centred running heads
classic	Fiction	Computer Modern, «Κεφάλαιο Πρώτο», chapters open on a right-hand page
sepia	Fiction on screen	warm paper colour and ink
clean	Guides, manuals	sans-serif, large chapter numbers

Greek typography

What greekbook does that generic tools don't:

• Hyphenation and justification. The PDF uses Typst's TeX-quality line breaking with Greek hyphenation patterns. Titles and headings are never hyphenated.
• Quotes by nesting level. «…» outside, “…” inside, as Greek typesetting requires. Quotes you typed yourself count towards the nesting.
• Capitals without accents. Running heads, chapter labels and covers are set in capitals the Greek way: accents are dropped, and an accent that kept two vowels apart becomes a diaeresis (τσάι → ΤΣΑΪ, ρολόι → ΡΟΛΟΪ, άυλος → ΑΫΛΟΣ). Typst's own upper() and CSS text-transform keep the accents.
• Greek numerals for chapters and parts (Α΄, Β΄, … ΙΑ΄, ΙΣΤ΄).
• No-break spaces after reference abbreviations (σ. 12, σσ. 4–7, κεφ. 3).
• Grammatical case in cross-references. Greek declines nouns, so the generic «στον Πίνακας 3.1» is wrong. Write στον Πίνακα [-@tbl:x] to get only the number.
• Syllabification for EPUB. E-readers often have no Greek hyphenation, so greekbook inserts soft hyphens with its own syllabifier. It follows the school grammar's rules and gets 100 % of an 85-word gold list right (see tests/test_hyphenation.py).

How it works

Markdown + book.yaml + .bib
   │  markdown-it-py (CommonMark + footnotes, tables, math, attributes)
   ▼
syntax tree ──► Greek typography (quotes, dashes, spacing) ──► escaping
   │
   ├──► Typst markup + greekbook Typst templates ──► Typst ──► PDF / PDF/A
   └──► XHTML + soft hyphens ──► EPUB 3

The Typst templates live in a regular Typst package (src/greekbook/typst/packages/local/greekbook), so you can also use them by hand or keep the generated source (greekbook build --keep-typst) and keep editing in Typst.

Development

$ git clone https://github.com/SpiliosDimakopoulos/greekbook && cd greekbook
$ pip install -e ".[dev]"
$ pytest            # 150+ tests: unit, end-to-end PDF checks, hypothesis properties
$ ruff check src tests && mypy

CI runs the suite on Linux, macOS and Windows with Python 3.10–3.13, builds both sample projects, validates the EPUB with epubcheck and publishes the PDFs as artifacts. Contributions, especially university cover pages and typographic rules, are welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Code: MIT. Bundled fonts: SIL Open Font License / Bitstream Vera (see src/greekbook/fonts). Bundled mitex: Apache-2.0.