[texhax] Using accented characters in source

Michael Barr barr at math.mcgill.ca
Sat May 1 19:16:16 CEST 2010


Now I have a simple way of actually entering an accented character in my 
source code (using AllChars) I began to wonder if it is easy to get TeX to 
interpret them correctly.  This is obviously a Windows-specific question. 
If I compile the file

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[french]{babel}
\begin{document}
Université
\end{document}

with or without the second line, the output is simply Universit.  This 
doesn't surprise me because the Windows code page does not match any of 
the font encodings, as far as I know.  Still I expected that the é would 
generate some output.  It is hex 82 and, from the table on page 261 of The 
LaTeX Companion, first edition, I would have expected C with an acute 
accent.

It is not really important; only for a few foreign words in an English 
language text, but I am still curious.  I can always say Univerist\'e (or 
I could make the è active and define it to be that, but then it wouldn't 
hyphenate.

Michael Barr


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