[R-pkg-devel] [FORGED] Re: .Rd, LaTeX and Unicode

[Rolf Turner]

I may well be toadally out to luntch here (if so please excuse the added 
noise) but perhaps the following may be of some help or relevance.

In a package that I wrote, I wanted to include the ß symbol in *.Rda 
file.  After a lot of thrashing about (and seeking advice from younger 
and wiser heads) I used this strategy:

* I put "\encoding{UTF-8}" at the very start of the *.Rda file
   (before the \name{ } command

* I made use of the ß symbol via the syntax:

     \enc{Weiß}{Weiss}

Again I apologise if this is completely off the point.

cheers,

Rolf


On 19/06/19 8:50 PM, Serguei Sokol wrote:
> On 18/06/2019 17:10, Georgi Boshnakov wrote:
>>
>> Since April 2018 'utf8' is the default input encoding in LaTeX, see
>> http://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/mirrors/CTAN/macros/latex/doc/ltnews.pdf 
>> and they added some symbols in December.
> Interesting ... but still not sufficient. I have a fairly recent latex 
> system:
> $ latex --version
> pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.19 (TeX Live 2018/Mageia)
> 
> but unfortunately utf8 alone (and even including
> \usepackage[mathletters]{ucs}) cannot compile utf8 math expressions.
> 
> I have also tried a full scale test on a tex file obtained with
> $ R CMD Rd2pdf --no-clean pkgname
> where I replaced
> 
> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
> 
> by
> 
> \usepackage[mathletters]{ucs}
> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> 
> and it did not compile either. In addition, I had to replace every 
> occurrence of
> 
> \inputencoding{utf8}
> 
> by
> 
> \inputencoding{utf8x}
> 
> after what pdflatex worked like a charm.
> 
> Serguei.
> 
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: R-package-devel [mailto:r-package-devel-bounces using r-project.org] 
>> On Behalf Of Martin Maechler
>> Sent: 18 June 2019 15:01
>> To: serguei.sokol using gmail.com; Hugh Parsonage
>> Cc: r-package-devel using r-project.org
>> Subject: Re: [R-pkg-devel] .Rd, LaTeX and Unicode
>>
>>>>>>> Hugh Parsonage
>>>>>>>      on Tue, 18 Jun 2019 20:03:41 +1000 writes:
>>
>>      > utf8x is deprecated
>>      > 
>> https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/13067/utf8x-vs-utf8-inputenc#13070 
>>
>>
>> Hmm... interestingly, I've tried quite a few versions of the
>> above which started in 2011, but had been updated in April 2016 :
>>     https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/203804/7228
>> from where it seems that
>>
>>           \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
>>     \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>>
>> should be sufficient.  Further, note that from
>>    https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/238135/7228
>> the {ucs} package should no longer be needed since ca. 2013,
>> hence your \usepackage[mathletters]{ucs}  would not be needed either.
>>
>> HOWEVER:  After losing at least half an hour now, trying many
>> variants I found that the only version that works correctly for
>> me (with a teTeX / TeXlive version of 2018) is the version
>> Serguei Sokol proposes (below), including the use of the 'utf8x'
>> option *and* the 'ucs' package ...
>>
>> which is pretty surprising after having read the
>> tex.statexchange threads ...
>>
>>      > On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 at 7:52 pm, Serguei Sokol 
>> <serguei.sokol using gmail.com>
>>      > wrote:
>>
>>      >> Hi,
>>      >>
>>      >> I am preparing a package where I would like to use UTF 
>> characters in .Rd
>>      >> files. When the LaTeX comes to play, I got well known errors 
>> e.g.:
>>      >> ! Package inputenc Error: Unicode character ∂ (U+2202)
>>      >> (inputenc)                not set up for use with LaTeX.
>>      >>
>>      >> It is coherent with what is said on this page
>>      >> https://developer.r-project.org/Encodings_and_R.html :
>>      >> "Since LaTeX cannot handle Unicode we would have to convert 
>> the encoding
>>      >> of latex help files or use Lambda (and tell it they were in 
>> UTF-8)."
>>
>> That whole document has been very important and crucial, written
>> by Prof Brian Ripley  who had worked a *LOT* to bring unicode to R,
>> -- but it has been written 2004-2005  and indeed, I think it is
>> probably fair to say that the above sentence no longer applies
>> to current LaTeX engines (including "simple" pdflatex)... though really,
>> I'm not the expert here, but I think it's a good point in time
>> to reconsider how much UTF8 should be allowed/supported in *.Rd files.
>>
>> One problem: This is (slightly) the wrong mailing list; this would have
>> been a perfect topic for 'R-devel' (discussing about new
>> features etc for R) instead....
>> ( but we'd rather keep it here for now.)
>>
>> Martin Maechler
>> ETH Zurich and R Core Team
>>
>>
>>
>>      >> But LaTeX can support UTF8 as shown with this small example:
>>
>>   \documentclass{article}
>>   \usepackage[mathletters]{ucs}
>>   \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>>   \begin{document}
>>   The vorticity ω is defined as $ω = ∇ × u$.
>>   \end{document}
>>
>>      >> I can compile it with my LaTeX without problem. May be you too?
>>      >> So my suggestion would be to place these two lines somewhere 
>> in LaTeX
>>      >> header generated by R doc system:
>>      >> \usepackage[mathletters]{ucs}
>>      >> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
>>      >>
>>      >> Note "utf8x" and not just "utf8" which is crucial for this 
>> example.
>>      >> With a hope that it would fix unicode errors from LaTeX.
>>      >>
>>      >> Best,
>>      >> Serguei