[Tex/LaTex] inputenc[utf8] error with input-function of external tex files

charactersinput-encodingsrtablesunicode

I got a problem with inputenc[utf8]. My document is in German and uses 'ä, ö, ü' which usually works fine with the following preamble:

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

I am using Texstudio for writing my document if that matters. The external tex files are only xtables produced by R. These are saved as .tex files, and put into my document via the \input{./file.tex} function. This also works well.
The problem is, when I add captions in German to the tables (e.g. sthg like 'ääääääää'), the following error results when compiling:

Package inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8:ä not set up for use with LaTeX ...

Is there any way I can circumvent this? I have the feeling the problem is that the above preamble is not part of tables produced by xtable in R. These have the following simple format (not separate preamble, just the following):

% latex table generated in R 3.0.1 by xtable 1.7-1 package
% Sat Nov 28 00:05:12 2013
\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{ääää}
\begin{tabular}{ l c r }
 1 & 2 & 3 \\
 4 & 5 & 6 
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

But then again these files should be included into the original document via the input-function just fine? I dont get the problem. You can test this hopefully by saving the above table under a separate tex file, then including it at the beginning of the document:

\documentclass[a4paper]{scrreprt}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\begin{document}
\input{./file.tex} % assuming you called it 'file'
\end document

Thanks for any hints. I am using Win 7 x64 and Miktex 2.9.

Best Answer

If you can not save the files in UTF8 just tell LaTeX what encoding they are in, most likely latin1 (ISO-8859-1) so:

{\inputencoding{latin1}\input{file.tex}}

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[Tex/LaTex] UTF8 for listings

listings is an 8-bit package. So if you want to use it you will have to add long lists of literate-declarations (for pdflatex) or char lists (for lualatex/xelatex see eg The 'listings' package and UTF-8). Also you will need fonts for all the glyphs (which means imho that pdflatex isn't really an option).

Without highlighting you could use xelatex/lualatex + the verbatim environment together with some font which covers unicode see e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1938639/monospace-unicode-font for such a font.

[Tex/LaTex] Produce 2 side-by-side tables from tables as external files (source: xtable in R)

The answer is: yes, it is possible.

Under the assumption that your .tex files each consists in some code of the form \begin{table}\begin{tabular}{...} ... \end{tabular}\end{table}, you can

locally redefine the table environment to do nothing, and
input that code inside a subtable environment; such an environment uses minipage internally, which means you don't have to use minipage explicitly.

Note that, in this specific case, you want to use \input, not \include; see When should I use \input vs. \include? for more details.

See my example below, in which I've defined a macro called \insertmytabular, for more automation.

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{subcaption}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\newcommand\insertmytabular[3][.45]%
{%
    {% extra group to make the redefinition of table local
        \renewenvironment{table}[1][]{}{}
        \begin{subtable}[b]{#1\textwidth}
            \centering
            \input{#2}
            \caption{#3}
        \end{subtable}%
    }%
}

\begin{filecontents*}{tabularstuff.tex}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
\toprule 
& \multicolumn{1}{c}{$N_1$} & 
\multicolumn{1}{c}{$N_2$} \\
\midrule 
$S_1$ &  0.14 & -1.243 \\ 
$S_2$ &  0.217 &  4.132 \\ 
$S_3$ &  7.350 & -9.913 \\ 
$S_4$ & 0.132 & 6.664 \\ 
\bottomrule 
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \insertmytabular{tabularstuff}{first table}
    \hfill
    \insertmytabular{tabularstuff}{second table}
    \caption{two tables}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Edit (answer to follow-up question): in that case, define \insertmytabular as follows:

\newcommand\insertmytabular[3][.45]%
{%
    {% extra group to make the redefinition of table local
        \renewenvironment{table}[1][]{}{}
        \begin{subtable}[b]{#1\textwidth}
            \input{#2}
        \end{subtable}%
    }%
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] UTF8 for listings

[Tex/LaTex] Produce 2 side-by-side tables from tables as external files (source: xtable in R)

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