I am using the hack given here as accepted solution to refer to a description list item by name instead of number. It works nicely, except when one of the words in the name ends with a non-ascii character, in which case it kills the space after it (only in the reference). Why is that? Is there a way to modify the hack that avoids this problem? I am using pdflatex with hyperref and inputenc.
A MWE:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\makeatletter
\let\orgdescriptionlabel\descriptionlabel
\renewcommand*{\descriptionlabel}[1]{%
\let\orglabel\label
\let\label\@gobble
\phantomsection
\edef\@currentlabel{#1}%
\let\label\orglabel
\orgdescriptionlabel{#1}%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\begin{description}
\item[Arzelà and Volterra\label{av}] Reference: \ref{av}.
\item[Arzel{à} and Volterra\label{av2}] Reference: \ref{av2}.
\item[Arzel\`a and Volterra\label{av3}] Reference: \ref{av3}.
\end{description}
\end{document}
An even worse problem arises with ß, which I don't need (try Weierstraß and Kummer).
