How to type these special letters from European languages in latex? ä, é, and L'?
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try texmaker portable means without installing it – lhoussaine daoudi Sep 6 '20 at 15:55
You can type texdoc lshort
in a command line (Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal on Linux/Mac OS X). Then have a look at Table 2.2 in Section 2.4.8. I'll quote it for you here.
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24You can also type them directly and use the
inputenc
package, which makes your source a lot more readable. – Alan Munn Jan 13 '11 at 3:25 -
Do you know how to type "L'" as well? Thanks. I typed "L'" and "L\'", but both does ways do not display "L'" when it generates the pdf file. – user2918 Jan 13 '11 at 3:28
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Assuming you typed "\L" and not "L\", if you're still not getting the character its because of the font encoding or the font itself (which may not have the glyph.) It should work with a standard TeX distribution. Did you try my suggestion too? – Alan Munn Jan 13 '11 at 4:24
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THe problem with using character modification is that spelling no longer works properly....or maybe there's a way around that too...let me ask a new questions. – Yossi Farjoun Jan 13 '11 at 11:57
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3
With pdfLaTeX
Save your file as UTF-8 and put
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % usually not needed (loaded by default)
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
in your preamble. With current (>2018) distributions inputenc
is no longer needed if the file is UTF-8, as that is the assumed default encoding.
Then you can just type the characters normally into your source file.
With XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX
ALternatively you can use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX which accept UTF-8 input natively. In that case you need to add only:
\usepackage{fontspec}
to your preamble. You should not load inputenc
(or fontenc
) in this case. These engines allow you to use any font installed on your system. See the fontspec
documentation for more details.
Lousy editor
If your text editor doesn't support UTF-8 encoded files, you should probably get another editor. But if you're stuck with one, you can also use:
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} % for PCs
\usepackage[applemac]{inputenc} % for Macs
and save the files in the default encoding for your machine. You cannot use XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX with such files, however.
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4Good advice. It's a good idea to load lmodern after switching the font encoding so that you get a font with all the extra accents and letters in it. – Will Robertson Jan 13 '11 at 7:29
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1Big upvote for fontspec. I was using lualatex and Unicode characters were not displayed at all. I tried inputenc, fontenc, lmodern, babel, polski and nothing worked. – user31389 May 13 '15 at 14:53
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1I'm all for UTF-8, but how would you suggest handling scenarios where the publisher's (archaic) template (I'm looking at you, IEEE) doesn't include the necessary packages? Would you simply add them to the template? – Dave Everitt Jan 31 '16 at 10:46
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2@DaveEveritt If the publisher accepts LaTeX source documents then you should definitely not change the engine, so using LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX instead of pdfLaTeX is almost certainly not an option. But loading
inputenc
andfontenc
is likely to be ok. If the publisher provides a style file but you submit camera ready PDF based on the style, then using any engine you like should be fine, and therefore loading the packages you need. – Alan Munn Jan 31 '16 at 14:52 -
1@AlanMunn thanks, that's well-put. I suppose the only remaining issue is to make sure the result doesn't stray from the publisher's fonts. – Dave Everitt Jan 31 '16 at 15:15
Users looking to make common accents in regular text mode can do so with, for example, \'e
.
MWE:
\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\begin{document}
Alfred Land\'e.
\end{document}
Output:
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5I think Kit already covered this in their answer from five years ago, no? – Au101 Apr 13 '16 at 16:23
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1This answer is a surely duplicate, as already noted by Au101. I flagged it for deletion. – Henri Menke Jan 9 '17 at 9:20
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3@HenriMenke, I'm sorry you feel that way; I think this answer much more clearly answers the question than Kit's answer. In face, I remember seeing this thread during my research and having to continue looking for the answer because it seems "buried" above. – user1717828 Jan 9 '17 at 13:42
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1This answer is very helpful--definitely not a duplicate. Kit's answer doesn't show how to produce a grave or acute accent using characters on a standard US keyboard layout. This shows that an acute accent can be produced with a normal apostrophe (
U+0027
), but Kit's answer shows a right single quotation mark (U+2019
). – lehiester Mar 6 '18 at 21:26
The package selinput
was not yet mentioned. Because I found good answers regarding its use on other places in TeX.SX let me first link to them:
Heiko Oberdiek (author of
selinput
):The input encoding depends on the editor that is used to write the TeX file … If the user is troubled to find the right encoding, then package
selinput
can help, …
(Encoding problems with custom LaTeX class (only on Windows 7/8). Why?)-
For languages other than English you can choose a semiautomatic input selection. … The
selinput
package is part of theoberdiek
bundle. It will select the right input encoding in dependence of the file encoding.
(German character not rendered to pdf)You could choose another way of input encoding by the
selinput
package from theoberdiek
bundle. It chooses the right encoding by some glyphs from your language correspondingly to the encoding of the source file.
(How to use spanish accents?)
The hardest part can be to find out, what has actually to be written in \SelectInputMappings
, read the package documentation for this. You are not forced to add every letter not in ASCII range, but you have to add some distinctive characters for your language. Below I added the letters from question.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{selinput}
\SelectInputMappings{%
adieresis={ä},
eacute={é},
Lcaron={Ľ},
}
\begin{document}
äéĽ
\end{document}
I don't mind plowing my way through symbol lists. Once I've found what I need, and then use it nth of times, I don't forget it. It's a good learning process.
Maybe a short hint for the German users: If you want to get an é (e accent acute) as described in this answer, you have to pay attention to not write \´e
as you are possibly used to do in e.g. a text-based program like Microsoft Word. (´ is the accent key between ß and BACKSPACE)
You can write \'e
instead (' is the apostrophe key, SHIFT + #).
This could also apply for all keyboards with the dedicated accent keys, probably also french, spanish, italian or more (requires more research).
It does not apply for the US-one as there is a key for ~ = SHIFT + `.
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This is really out-of-date advice. The default file encoding assumed by the LaTeX kernel is UTF-8, as is the default file encoding of most editors. So the simple answer is just type your letters as you would in any other application, and make sure you're loading a font that contains them. – Alan Munn Sep 6 '20 at 16:26