BibTeX and UTF-8 and accentued characters
Merciadri Luca
Hash: SHA1
Hi,
I am using BibTeX on my Debian Lenny, with a texlive. According to
what I read on the Internet, BibTeX seems not to support the utf-8
format, for many reasons. My first reaction was to
$ iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1 mybibfile.bib
where `mybibfile.bib' is one of my bib files of one of my documents.
Okay, it works, but, when compiling the main .tex file, I receive
things like
`synth.tex:127:Package utf8x Error:
MalformedUTF-8sequence. ... F.~Bastin}, {\em {Examen d'entr\'ee � la'
where `F. Bastin' is actually an author and `Examen d'entrée' is the
name of a document. I am using
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
in my preamble. The problem is that inputenc parses *.bbl as utf-8
files, but as BibTeX does not support utf-8, these errors appear.
Or I am obliged to use
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
because of my document's encoding. I am thus unable to modify this. I
can modify the encoding of the *.bib files, but if I switch to
iso-8859-1, BibTeX is happy, but inputenc not. If I switch back to
utf-8, inputenc is happy, but BibTeX not.
I have introduced accents using LaTeX syntax, e.g.
`ée' is written `\'ee' in the .bib files. I had already tried with the
mere accents directly coming from the keyboard (i.e. without any LaTeX
commands), but it does not work too.
I read that using LuaTeX or another thing would be useful, but I do
not want to switch to this. I desperately tried
\usepackage{amsrefs}
but it did not change anything, with(out)
\usepackage{frbib}.
All I want is my .bib file(s) to be parsed correctly, and to be
rendered normally in my output .pdf file. I am using the routine
latex (dvi) -> dvi2ps (ps) -> ps2pdf (pdf).
Using directly pdfLaTeX is evidently not possible according to my
code.
I would appreciate any idea, folks.
- --
Merciadri Luca
See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
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Ulrike Fischer
> I am using BibTeX on my Debian Lenny, with a texlive. According to
> what I read on the Internet, BibTeX seems not to support the utf-8
> format, for many reasons. My first reaction was to
> $ iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1 mybibfile.bib
> where `mybibfile.bib' is one of my bib files of one of my documents.
> Okay, it works, but, when compiling the main .tex file, I receive
> things like
> `synth.tex:127:Package utf8x Error:
> MalformedUTF-8sequence. ... F.~Bastin},
You can switch the inputencoding before reading the bbl-file:
\begingroup
\inputencoding{latin1}
bibliography
\endgroup
Also bibtex does support utf-8 to some extend (it doesn't really
care). The main problem is that it can put newlines between the
utf-8 code of chars.
--
Ulrike Fischer
Merciadri Luca
Hash: SHA1
Ulrike Fischer <ne...@nililand.de> writes:
Thanks for this, Ulrike. I was not aware of these facts. It works like a
charm, now.
- --
Merciadri Luca
See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
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Thomas Arildsen
I am using a different approach. I keep my .bib-file in UTF-8 as well as
my LaTeX document. I use:
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
I use biblatex, which is capable of handling UTF-8:
\usepackage[bibencoding=inputenc]{biblatex}
In stead of BibTeX, I use Biber:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/biblatex-biber/
It is designed to handle unicode and specifically intended for biblatex.
It is still not out in a stable version, but it seems to work fine for my
purposes.
Thomas Arildsen
--
All email to sender address is lost.
My real adress is at es dot aau dot dk for user tha.
Peter Flynn
> I am using BibTeX on my Debian Lenny, with a texlive. According to
> what I read on the Internet, BibTeX seems not to support the utf-8
> format, for many reasons. My first reaction was to
> $ iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1 mybibfile.bib
> where `mybibfile.bib' is one of my bib files of one of my documents.
I'm in a similar position under Ubuntu 9.10. But I go the other way,
iconv -t utf-8 mybibfile.bib
which seems to work for almost everything except an s-caron, which I
ended up editing in as \v{s}.
> Okay, it works, but, when compiling the main .tex file, I receive
> things like
> `synth.tex:127:Package utf8x Error:
> MalformedUTF-8sequence. ... F.~Bastin}, {\em {Examen d'entr\'ee � la'
> where `F. Bastin' is actually an author and `Examen d'entrée' is the
> name of a document. I am using
> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> in my preamble. The problem is that inputenc parses *.bbl as utf-8
> files, but as BibTeX does not support utf-8, these errors appear.
On reflection, I suspect my file may contain only those characters which
are in 8859-1, and thus inoffensive as a proper subset of UTF-8.
> Or I am obliged to use
> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> because of my document's encoding. I am thus unable to modify this. I
> can modify the encoding of the *.bib files, but if I switch to
> iso-8859-1, BibTeX is happy, but inputenc not. If I switch back to
> utf-8, inputenc is happy, but BibTeX not.
I believe biblatex solves this, but I haven't grokked it yet. And I
don't know if it works with JabRef and other BIBTeX-oriented tools.
> I have introduced accents using LaTeX syntax, e.g.
> `ée' is written `\'ee' in the .bib files. I had already tried with the
> mere accents directly coming from the keyboard (i.e. without any LaTeX
> commands), but it does not work too.
\'{e} for some utterly obscure reason, seems to be the canonical format.
> All I want is my .bib file(s) to be parsed correctly, and to be
> rendered normally in my output .pdf file. I am using the routine
> latex (dvi) -> dvi2ps (ps) -> ps2pdf (pdf).
I think I may have to spend some time learning biblatex...
///Peter
Philipp Stephani
> Merciadri Luca wrote:
>> I am using BibTeX on my Debian Lenny, with a texlive. According to
>> what I read on the Internet, BibTeX seems not to support the utf-8
>> format, for many reasons. My first reaction was to
>> $ iconv -f utf-8 -t iso-8859-1 mybibfile.bib
>> where `mybibfile.bib' is one of my bib files of one of my documents.
>
> I'm in a similar position under Ubuntu 9.10. But I go the other way,
> iconv -t utf-8 mybibfile.bib
> which seems to work for almost everything except an s-caron, which I
> ended up editing in as \v{s}.
The combination of UTF-8 and bibtex sometimes sort-of works, but this
combination has many flaws, see sec. 2.4.3 of the biblatex manual.
>> Okay, it works, but, when compiling the main .tex file, I receive
>> things like
>> `synth.tex:127:Package utf8x Error:
>> MalformedUTF-8sequence. ... F.~Bastin}, {\em {Examen d'entr\'ee � la'
>> where `F. Bastin' is actually an author and `Examen d'entrée' is the
>> name of a document. I am using
>> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>> in my preamble. The problem is that inputenc parses *.bbl as utf-8
>> files, but as BibTeX does not support utf-8, these errors appear.
>
> On reflection, I suspect my file may contain only those characters
> which are in 8859-1, and thus inoffensive as a proper subset of UTF-8.
UTF-8 is a character encoding, not a characer set, and so it makes no
sense to speak of subsets of UTF-8. Perhaps you mean one of the
following:
- ISO-8859-1 is a subset of Unicode. This is certainly true, but every
other character set is also a subset of Unicode, and bibtex doesn't
know anything about these matters anyway. But ISO-8859-1 has the
unique property of sharing all code point–character mappings with
Unicode.
- Every well-formed ISO-8859-1 string is also a valid UTF-8 string,
which would be false.
I don't think that characters from the ISO-8859-1 character set work any
better in bibtex, and if so, then only by accident.
>> Or I am obliged to use
>> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>> because of my document's encoding. I am thus unable to modify this. I
>> can modify the encoding of the *.bib files, but if I switch to
>> iso-8859-1, BibTeX is happy, but inputenc not. If I switch back to
>> utf-8, inputenc is happy, but BibTeX not.
>
> I believe biblatex solves this, but I haven't grokked it yet. And I
> don't know if it works with JabRef and other BIBTeX-oriented tools.
Yes, biblatex supports mixed encodings. However, if you are using
biblatex, then you should use biber anyway, which is capable of UTF-8.
>> I have introduced accents using LaTeX syntax, e.g.
>> `ée' is written `\'ee' in the .bib files. I had already tried with the
>> mere accents directly coming from the keyboard (i.e. without any LaTeX
>> commands), but it does not work too.
>
> \'{e} for some utterly obscure reason, seems to be the canonical
> format.
No, {\'e}; this is also explained in sec. 2.4.3 of the biblatex manual.
--
Change “LookInSig” to “tcalveu” to answer by mail.
Peter Flynn
[...]
>> which are in 8859-1, and thus inoffensive as a proper subset of UTF-8.
>
> UTF-8 is a character encoding, not a characer set, and so it makes no
> sense to speak of subsets of UTF-8. Perhaps you mean one of the
Quite so. I meant to type Unicode.
> Yes, biblatex supports mixed encodings. However, if you are using
> biblatex, then you should use biber anyway, which is capable of UTF-8.
I'm not really concerned about mixed encodings. If it will handle
everything in UTF-8 that's fine. But I would like to have tools like
JabRef...
>> \'{e} for some utterly obscure reason, seems to be the canonical
>> format.
>
> No, {\'e}; this is also explained in sec. 2.4.3 of the biblatex manual.
Sorry, my fingers are slipping tonight. That's what I meant.
///Peter
Merciadri Luca
Hash: SHA1
Thanks for the answers. I am now okay with this.
- --
Merciadri Luca
See http://www.student.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~merciadri/
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