Switch on UTF8 encoding

[dbeyer]

Since ACMART is internationally used, by many people with accents in author names and affiliations, it might be a good idea to switch on uft8 input encoding by default, in order to relieve the authors from one additional config line in each of their main.tex files. Is it possible to include the following in the acmart class file? \RequirePackage[utf8]{inputenc}

[krono]

Or even

  \RequirePackage[utf8]{inputenx}
  \input{ix-utf8enc.dfu}

[borisveytsman]

Adding this line will make life marginally better for the authors who use UTF-8 in input. However, it will make life tremendously more hard for the authors who do not: for example, just adding an epigraph in Greek and using LGR.

[krono]

Isn't LGR a font encoding, not an input encoding?

(I have a class where precisely because of that issue I use this:

\RequirePackage[LGR,OT1,LY1,T1]{fontenc}
\RequirePackage[utf8]{inputenx}
\input{ix-utf8enc.dfu}
\RequirePackage{alphabeta}

)

[borisveytsman]

Yes, you are right

Ok suppose you want a Russian citation and use koi8.

[krono]

hm, is the Russian support so bad with UTF8 in LaTeX?

[borisveytsman]

Many people use koi-8 and cp1251 by tradition.

[krono]

\documentclass[sigconf,russian,english]{acmart}

\RequirePackage[LGR,OT1,LY1,T2A,T1]{fontenc}
\RequirePackage[utf8]{inputenx}
\input{ix-utf8enc.dfu}
\RequirePackage{alphabeta}
\usepackage{babel}
\begin{document}

\foreignlanguage{russian}{я не знаю}
\end{document}

this seems to work for short parts

[krono]

Also, shouldn't we advocate to only use utf-8? I persnoally think it is worthwile.

[borisveytsman]

We have thousands of authors. I am not sure we are in a position to forcefully advocate input encodings: do we want a long holy war among some passionate ones? I would rather give as much freedom to authors as I can.

[krono]

That's true. But with this reasoning, acmart also would have to consider XeTeX and LuaTeX, or even Biblatex instead of BibTeX, right?

[borisveytsman]

absolutely. This is in my plans

[krono]

Ping me if I can help :)

[borisveytsman]

Thanks!

[zackw]

Please note that neither inputenc nor inputenx sets the space factor of Unicode close curly quotes correctly. (\sfcode’ is 0, but \sfcode” is 1000. Both should be zero.) Therefore, if you do take the Unicode input plunge, please also add

% inputenc doesn't set the space factor of Unicode close curly quote
% correctly.  (In current versions, the \sfcode of ’ is 0, but the
% \sfcode of ” is still 1000.  Both should be zero.)
\AtBeginDocument{%
  \sfcode\csname\encodingdefault\string\textquotedblright\endcsname=0%
  \sfcode\csname\encodingdefault\string\textquoteright\endcsname=0%
}

to an appropriate place in the class file.

[borisveytsman]

Should we rather press upstream authors (L3 team for inputenx) to make changes rather than working around bugs? Could you write to latex-team@latex-project.org?

[zackw]

I wrote them a note and cc:ed you.

[rionda]

Is this question still relevant since utf-8 encoding is the default in LaTeX since 2018 (see https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb39-1/tb121ltnews28.pdf) ?

[borisveytsman]

This is now obsolete due to changes in LaTeX kernel