utf8
option for the LaTeX distribution
inputenc package. The separate package ucs
provides wider, but less robust, coverage via an inputenc
option utf8x
. Broadly, the difference is that
utf8
deals with “standard LaTeX fonts” (those for
which LaTeX has a defined encoding), while utf8x
deals
with pretty much anything for which it knows a mapping of a Unicode
range to a font. As a general rule, you should never use
ucs/utf8x
until you have convinced yourself that
inputenc/utf8
can not do the job for you.
‘Modern’ TeX-alike applications, XeTeX and
LuaTeX read their input using UTF-8
representations of Unicode as standard. They also use TrueType or
OpenType fonts for output; each such font has tables that tell the
application which part(s) of the Unicode space it covers; the tables
enable the engines to decide which font to use for which character
(assuming there is any choice at all).
This answer last edited: 2011-03-07
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