Bug#446476: natbib cannot handle utf8
On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 14:30 +0100, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de> [2007.10.13.1312 +0100]:
> > > So I tried *again* to remove the utf8 characters from the bibtex
> > > entries, and this time I guess I got them all (and previously must
> > > have forgotten one), and suddenly it works.
> >
> > recode --diacritics UTF-8..LaTeX
>
> I wasn't aware of this, but to be honest, I'd rather *not* use it.
> Latex diacritics are a pain to read. It's 2007. I should not have to
> be jumping through hoops.
It was meant as an easy way to find all UTF-8 encoded characters.
However, since this works the other way round, too, you could alter
your makefile like this
main.bbl: main.tex.aux
recode --diacritics UTF-8..LaTeX biblio.bib
bibtex main
recode --diacritics LaTeX..UTF-8 biblio.bib
That way the only place with LaTeX diacritics would be the bbl-file,
which one does not have to read in most cases.
> > > So this is a natbib bug, it seems.
> >
> > It might also be a problem with ucs.sty's implementation of UTF-8. At
> > least your sample document works for me if I use the UTF-8
> > implementation from inputenc, ie
> >
> > \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>
> I can confirm this. Let me try to figure out why I wanted to use
> ucs...
ucs.sty has a broader coverage than inputenc's UTF-8. And it is the
older implementation. Maybe you started using UTF-8 before such things
were provided by LaTeX itself (and present in Debian).
> So this is starting to look like a bug in
> ucs.sty/texlive-latex-recommended then?
Might be. I doubt that ucs.sty, which AFAIK is no longer maintained,
will be changed. It might also be that it is possible to change natbib
in such a way that it can cope with ucs's UTF-8 implementation. I am
not sure whether it is worth the trouble, though, given that
inputenc's UTF-8 implementation can be considered standard. And TeX
implementations that natively read UTF-8 are getting more standard as
well. For example your document works without problem with 'xelatex'
instead of 'latex' once one removes all references to inputenc/ucs/...
cheerio
ralf
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