\MakeShortVerb{\§} and \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

Question

I have a book published more than 10 years ago. It contains the following code in its preamble:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[cp1251]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}

\usepackage{shortvrb}
\MakeShortVerb{\§}

\begin{document}
§\begin{i}§
\end{document} 

Now I want to convert source files to unicode. However after changing cp1251 encoding to utf8

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

compilation stopped with error message indicating on a problem with \MakeShortVerb{\§}:

! Missing \endcsname inserted.
<to be read again> 
                   \protect 
l.8 \MakeShortVerb{\В§}

? h
The control sequence marked <to be read again> should
not appear between \csname and \endcsname.

? h
Sorry, I already gave what help I could...
Maybe you should try asking a human?
An error might have occurred before I noticed any problems.
``If all else fails, read the instructions.''

? 

! Package inputenc Error: Keyboard character used is undefined
(inputenc)                in inputencoding `utf8'.

See the inputenc package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...                                              

l.8 \MakeShortVerb{\В§}

? r

How to bypass this problem? Nothing to say that I still want to use § as delimiters for short verbatim text. Is shortverb package compatible with utf8 encoding?

Answer 1

@egreg again too quick. But I had lunch to prepare...

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

%\usepackage{shortvrb}

\makeatletter
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{00A7}{\IgorSVerb}
\def\IgorSVerb{\begingroup\def\IgorSVerb{\verb@egroup\endgroup}\verb^^a7}
\makeatother


\begin{document}
Hello

§\begin{i}$&^\}{"'çÂ\]%§

§\begin{i}$&^\}{"'çÂ\]%§

\selectlanguage{english}

§\begin{i}$&^\}{"'çÂ\]%§

§\begin{i}$&^\}{"'çÂ\]%§<

\end{document} 

Answer 2

The problem is that, in UTF-8, § is two byte long, but \MakeShortVerb wants only one.

The best I can offer is the following:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1,T2A]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english,russian]{babel}

\begingroup\uccode`~="C2 \uppercase{\endgroup
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{00A7}{\verb~}}
\begingroup\uccode`~="A7 \uppercase{\endgroup\def~}{}

\begin{document}

§\begin{i}§

§{-{\§

\end{document}

The limitation is that no character that in UTF-8 is prefixed by <C2> can appear in the verbatim text: the list of forbidden characters is

¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿

that is, the Unicode range 00A1–00BF.