Bug#382075: bibtex fails to handle unicode .bib files

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> wrote:

> Package: tetex-bin
> Version: 3.0-17
> Severity: normal
> File: /usr/bin/bibtex
>
> bibtex cannot deal with Unicode .bib files. It would be nice if this
> were possible, unicode is kind of a standard by now...

bibtex in tetex is not even 8bit-clean.  There's an 8bit-clean bibtex
implementation in texlive, but even there it is not the default.
Probably by a reason.

I know of one attempt to reimplement bibtex for Unicode support, and
additionally with the possibility to switch scripts and languages on a
per-entry basis, mlbibtex.  But this seems to be a rather academic
project - I heard a talk where its author nicely explained its great
planned features and showed some commandline examples on-screen, but
when someone asked the question "How well is it usable as a replacement
for bibtex, and can one download a version for testing?" he didn't even
understand the question, let alone answer it...  So I wouldn't expect it
to be a usable alternative in the foreseeable future.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)