[Tex/LaTex] Problem with special characters in .toc files

auxiliary-filesinput-encodingstable of contents

I have an odd problem with special characters (in this case the Swedish åäö), that pops up in my .toc file. If I remove the .toc file everything works OK except I get an empty table of contents. When I re-run pdflatex, I get errors on every line in the .toc file that has either of åäö in it (which, as it happens, is every line…).

I've tried to produce a MWE example of this, but I'm unable to reproduce the problem with other files. However, I've noticed that for other files, åäö in the .toc file are replaced as follows:

å -> \IeC {\r a}
ä -> \IeC {\"a}
ö -> \IeC {\"o}

In the .toc file for the failing document, only å is replaced. Why could this be? What can I do about it?

Clarification: As I said, I have tried but been unable to reproduce this error in a MWE. (The full version is a pretty advanced structure with templates, frame and content files compiled by a python script calling pdflatex via os.system(), so I can't really just "scale off" one piece after another…) However, I can give the following information:

  • All files are saved in utf-8.
  • I'm using \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} and \usepackage[swedish]{babel}.
  • The python file starts with #coding: utf8

Best Answer

When the non-ascii-chars like ä or ö get in the toc, this means that they are not active. Perhaps you are storing some of your titles in commands before inputenc has been loaded:

\documentclass{article}
\def\test{ÅÄÖ}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents

\section{\test}

\end{document}

My example doesn't give an error, but its possible that your python code insert an utf8 char tex can't handle.

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