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I'm receiving a ton of warnings á la "token not allowed in a pdf string", since most of my section titles contain math (see this post here: Hyperref - Token not allowed or here: Hyperref warning - Token not allowed in a PDF string).

I want to apply the solution provided to previous questions, i.e. write \texorpdfstring{\(math\)}{Lg}. However, I would rather want this to be done automatically. Could the math environment (within section titles) be changed to automatically add \textorpdfstring.

MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\section{\(I\) cast warnings but I wish I wouldnt}
\section{\texorpdfstring{\(I\)}{I} dont}
\section{Of course me neither}
\end{document}
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sheß
  • 3,622
  • What should be done with \(\alpha=\sum_{i=0}^n \beta_i\)? – egreg Apr 29 '16 at 10:07
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    @egreg: That is not really important, for readability in the pdf-viewer it would probably be best to just strip all characters that can't be used (i think this roughly corresponds to the behavior when I just ignore the warning). As simpler solution could just be to replace it always with "[math]" or so. – sheß Apr 29 '16 at 10:10

1 Answers1

5

A simple solution is to gobble math with \pdfstringdefDisableCommands:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\makeatletter
\pdfstringdefDisableCommands{\let\(\fake@math}
\newcommand\fake@math{}% just for safety
\def\fake@math#1\){[math]}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\section{\(I\) cast warnings but I wish I wouldnt}
\section{\texorpdfstring{\(I\)}{I} dont}
\section{Of course me neither}
\end{document}

This will replace all math formulas in \(...\) with [math].

enter image description here

Doing selective replacement would need implementing a full parser.

egreg
  • 1,121,712
  • Great. Do you know why this (or some more sophisticated version) is not implemented as the default? Rather than always displaying this warning? – sheß Apr 29 '16 at 10:39
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    @sheß I guess that Heiko wanted to leave the decision to the user. – egreg Apr 29 '16 at 10:45
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    @sheß May be you prefer \def\fake@math#1\){\detokenize{#1}} so you get a little more information than [math]. Or whatever you choose, but I mean that it contains \detoknize{#1} so you actually know what was in that particular math mode. – Manuel Apr 29 '16 at 10:55
  • @Manuel That can be a good idea; of course it depends on what math is expected to sneak in titles. – egreg Apr 29 '16 at 10:57
  • @egreg: Can you give an example of what would cause the \detokenize method to fail? – sheß Apr 29 '16 at 11:03
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    @sheß Well, if I enable the unicode option, \(\sum\alpha\) outputs some strange Chinese characters in the bookmark: picture – egreg Apr 29 '16 at 11:08