Latin1, utf8 with Texmaker

Question

I state that I have read many discussions about my problem but have not yet managed to solve. I 'the first time I use LaTeX and as editor I chose Texmaker. I'm writing on Windows 7 64bit.

I created a main.tex file as the following:

documentclass[a4paper, 11pt]{book}

\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[nouppercase, swapnames]{frontespizio}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{booktabs} 
\usepackage{array} 

\usepackage{graphicx} 

\begin{document}

    \frontmatter
        \input{./frontespizio/frontespizio}
        \tableofcontents

    \mainmatter
        \input{./capitoli/1}
        \input{./capitoli/2}

    \backmatter

\end{document}

Files 1.tex and 2.tex contain mostly text but also tables and images. In the text are obviously present accented letters as à, è, ò, ù... The problem is that when I compile the main file, there is this error:

pdfTeX warning: pdflatex (file pdftex.map): cannot open font map file
] [4] (capitoli/1.tex
Capitolo 1.
) (capitoli/2.tex [1] [2]
Capitolo 2.
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\lm\ot1lmr.fd")
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\lm\omllmm.fd")
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\lm\omslmsy.fd")
("C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\tex\latex\lm\omxlmex.fd")

LaTeX Warning: Command \textellipsis invalid in math mode on input line 12.


LaTeX Warning: Command \textellipsis invalid in math mode on input line 12.


Overfull \hbox (1.04575pt too wide) detected at line 22
\OML/lmm/m/it/10.95 LCS\OT1/lmr/m/n/10.95 (\OML/lmm/m/it/10.95 A[]; B[]\OT1/lmr
/m/n/10.95 ) = []

Underfull \vbox (badness 1132) has occurred while \output is active [3]
Overfull \hbox (92.19824pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 38--52
[][]

! Package inputenc Error: Unicode char Ο (U+39F)
(inputenc)                not set up for use with LaTeX.

See the inputenc package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.53 ...o ha complessità spaziale e temporale $Ο
                                                  (nÔêÖm)$ risulta poco adat...

?

Problem on the accented letters. Why? How can I fix? I looked in the settings of texmaker and how encoding is set to UTF-8. I tried to copy the text of the two and 2.tex 1.tex file in Notepad and save it as tex and utf-8 but nothing..

I do not know what to do.. Thanks!

Answer 1

The error message you copy&pasted is taken from a Windows terminal, which makes things a little more complex to analyze.

The important line in your error log is:

l.53 ...o ha complessità spaziale e temporale $Ο
                                                  (nÔêÖm)$ risulta poco adat...

This line points to the character causing trouble, which is the one at the end of the first line, i.e. Ο (and not the accented letters which appeared before, and caused no trouble).

However, surely you are pretty sure that your document does not contain the offending chars Ο, right? And you are right.

The problem is that Windows console uses the ancient MS-DOS code page, and not UTF-8, so your error message gets mangled. Using some iconv juggling in my (utf-8) linux machine:

$ cat mangled_error.txt
l.53 ...o ha complessità spaziale e temporale $Ο
                                                  (nÔêÖm)$ risulta poco adat...
$ iconv -f utf8 -t cp850 < mangled_error.txt > error.txt
$ cat error.txt
l.53 ...o ha complessità spaziale e temporale $Ο
                                                  (n∙m)$ risulta poco adat...

Aha! Now the error looks more readable. The offending char was not the à, as you thought, but the Ο, which is a (utf-8 encoded) capital letter Omicron. This character was not set up to be used in latex. Can you replace it by a "normal" (latin) O? See also: omicron not working in LaTeX