best practicesinput-encodingsunicode
I normally use \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} for my latex document but on this site i saw a lot of code with \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}.
What are the differences between the 2 options ?
Is there one of the option obsolete and which one should I use ?
Use xelatex or lualatex and choose a font that has the symbols you need. Below I've used the Doulos SIL font.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Doulos SIL}
\begin{document}
Acides nucléiques et synthèse des protéines chez les végétaux: {[}actes du colloque international{]}, Strasbourg, 15-24 juillet 1976
Russko-moldavskiĭ zoologicheskiĭ slovarʹ. Gani︠a︡
Russkiĭ narodnyĭ lubok
Slovarʹ-spravochnik po shelkovodstvu. Gani︠a︡
Aėrokosmichesk kurʹer =: Aerospace courier
\end{document}
Best Answer
The simple answer is that
utf8xis to be avoided if possible. It loads theucspackage, which for a long time was unmaintained (although there is now a new maintainer) and breaks various other things.See egreg's answer to this question as well, which outlines how to get extra characters using the
[utf8]option ofinputenc.Generally, however, the best way to deal with Unicode source (especially with non-latin scripts) is really XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.
There's an extended discussion of this here: Encoding remarks. See especially the comments by Philipp Lehman and Philipp Stephani.