How to use a non-ASCII character, such as a Greek letter, in bibtex?

Question

This is the title of the journal article: Verification of a sliding window protocol in µCRL and PVS.

This is the bibtex file for the same:

@article{journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,
  added-at = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  author = {Badban, Bahareh and Fokkink, Wan and Groote, Jan Friso and Pang, Jun and van de Pol, Jaco},
  biburl = {http://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860/dblp},
  date = {2005-11-15},
  description = {dblp},
  ee = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-005-0070-0},
  interhash = {2d68692f33c41a23a91f6237b2a0e572},
  intrahash = {788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860},
  journal = {Formal Asp. Comput.},
  keywords = {dblp},
  number = 3,
  pages = {342-388},
  timestamp = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  title = {Verification of a sliding window protocol in µCRL and PVS.},
  url = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/journals/fac/fac17.html#BadbanFGPP05},
  volume = 17,
  year = 2005
}

But in PDF, µ symbol is missing.

This is output:

At dblp, i got the following source:

@article{DBLP:journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,
  author    = {Bahareh Badban and
               Wan Fokkink and
               Jan Friso Groote and
               Jun Pang and
               Jaco van de Pol},
  title     = {Verification of a sliding window protocol in \^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}},
  journal   = {Formal Asp. Comput.},
  volume    = {17},
  number    = {3},
  year      = {2005},
  pages     = {342-388},
  ee        = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-005-0070-0},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}

This doesn't work either. What should I do?

Answer 1

If you need to stick to pdflatex and encode your files in UTF-8, then the following works:

% -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@article{journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,
  added-at = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  author = {Badban, Bahareh and Fokkink, Wan and Groote, Jan Friso and Pang, Jun and van de Pol, Jaco},
  biburl = {http://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860/dblp},
  date = {2005-11-15},
  description = {dblp},
  ee = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-005-0070-0},
  interhash = {2d68692f33c41a23a91f6237b2a0e572},
  intrahash = {788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860},
  journal = {Formal Asp. Comput.},
  keywords = {dblp},
  number = 3,
  pages = {342-388},
  timestamp = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  title = {Verification of a sliding window protocol in {µCRL} and {PVS}.},
  url = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/journals/fac/fac17.html#BadbanFGPP05},
  volume = 17,
  year = 2005
}
\end{filecontents*}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{natbib}

\usepackage{newunicodechar,textgreek}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\newunicodechar{µ}{\textmu}

\begin{document}
\cite{journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05}

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

The usual pdflatex file, bibtex file, pdflatex file, pdflatex file will end up with this.

I've made some assumptions on what you use for producing the bibliography (here natbib and plainnat style). The filecontents* environment is just to have a self-contained example.

Answer 2

the easiest way is to run your document with xelatex instead of pdflatex. The code changes in the preamble are simple. Here is an example for xelatex with your bib entries:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{testbib.bib}
@article{journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,
  added-at = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  author = {Badban, Bahareh and Fokkink, Wan and Groote, Jan Friso and Pang, Jun and van de Pol, Jaco},
  biburl = {http://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860/dblp},
  date = {2005-11-15},
  description = {dblp},
  ee = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-005-0070-0},
  interhash = {2d68692f33c41a23a91f6237b2a0e572},
  intrahash = {788fbd81863c8e397b18da96324b4860},
  journal = {Formal Asp. Comput.},
  keywords = {dblp},
  number = 3,
  pages = {342-388},
  timestamp = {2005-11-15T00:00:00.000+0100},
  title = {Verification of a sliding window protocol in µCRL and PVS.},
  url = {http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/journals/fac/fac17.html#BadbanFGPP05},
  volume = 17,
  year = 2005
}
@article{DBLP:journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,
  author    = {Bahareh Badban and
               Wan Fokkink and
               Jan Friso Groote and
               Jun Pang and
               Jaco van de Pol},
  title     = {Verification of a sliding window protocol in \^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}\^{\i}},
  journal   = {Formal Asp. Comput.},
  volume    = {17},
  number    = {3},
  year      = {2005},
  pages     = {342-388},
  ee        = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00165-005-0070-0},
  bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
%\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\begin{document}
foo~\cite{DBLP:journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05,journals/fac/BadbanFGPP05}

\bibliographystyle{alpha}
\bibliography{testbib}
\end{document}

running xelatex -> bibtex -> xelatex produces the output: