Error: Unicode char \u8:φ not set up for use with LaTeX

Question

I have the following LaTeX document, saved in the UTF-8 character set encoding:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
φΔδ汉
\end{document}

(it has 3 Greek characters followed by a Chinese one.) When I try to compile it, I get the following error:

$ latex foo
This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-1.40.11 (TeX Live 2010)
restricted \write18 enabled.
[...]
! Package inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8:φ not set up for use with LaTeX.

How can I use these and other characters, in UTF-8 encoded .tex files?

Note: This and this look like duplicates but they are slightly different and don't answer my question.

Answer 1

The inputenc package, even with the utf8 option doesn't load all the Unicode tables. It loads only those for which it knows it will have to typeset some glyphs.

You have then to teach the proper environment, because each Unicode block requires a different TeX fonts (they have only 256 characters).

So your example works with pdflatex, but modified into the following code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[LGRx,T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}
\usepackage{CJKutf8}
\begin{document}

\foreignlanguage{greek}{φΔδ}\begin{CJK}{UTF8}{gbsn}汉\end{CJK}

\end{document}

This is admittedly largely impractical for extensive usage of characters belonging to different blocks, so it may be advisable to switch to XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX that can use OpenType fonts.

Important update

After release of Babel version 3.9, the LGRx encoding should not be used any more. Now LaTeX is able to interpret correctly UTF-8 characters for Greek out of the box, provided the Greek language is loaded with babel. So the example above becomes

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[greek,english]{babel}
\usepackage{CJKutf8}
\begin{document}

\foreignlanguage{greek}{φΔδ}\begin{CJK}{UTF8}{gbsn}汉\end{CJK}

\end{document}

Answer 2

utf8 for pdflatex has only a limited subset of Unicode. Use xelatex with

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Code2000}
%\setmainfont{Arial Unicode MS}
\begin{document}
φΔδ汉
\end{document}

Code2000 can be replaced by another OpenType or TrueType font which has all that characters, eg. Arial Unicode.

Answer 3

I'd just like to add my use case, which basically involves a manual install of LGRx:

Essentially, all I want is to be able to type units like μW directly in UTF-8 in the source .tex file (that is, I'd rather not type constructs like \foreignlanguage{greek}{μ}W); and I need to be using pdflatex.

Currently I'm on a machine with texlive 2011, which I cannot upgrade fully at the moment.

On texlive 2011, the combo:

• [utf8x]{inputenc/x} + [LGR, T1]{fontenc} + {textcomp}

generally works fine. Unfortunately, the problem is that additionally I need to be using biblatex, which chokes on the ucs package which utf8x loads.

So, I tried the [LGRx,T1]{fontenc} as recommended in the accepted answer - but it turns out, there is no LGRx encoding in texlive 2011 ...

So, after a bit of digging, this is what I ended up doing in bash:

wget http://milde.users.sourceforge.net/LGR/lgrxenc.def -O /path/to/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/tex/generic/babel/lgrxenc.def
texhash
wget http://milde.users.sourceforge.net/LGR/lgrenc.dfu -O /path/to/texlive/2011/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/lgrenc.dfu
texhash

Note that you must call texhash (see LaTeX/Installing Extra Packages: 4. Update your index - Wikibooks) otherwise pdflatex will not be able to find the newly downloaded files.

With that, now the combo

• [utf8]{inputenc/x} + [LGRx, T1]{fontenc} + {textcomp}

... works fine, like in this example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\usepackage[LGRx, T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}


\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} % just testing - is OK

\begin{document}

μW

\end{document}

Note that

• the lgrxenc.def I've downloaded is v0.6/2012-06-29 , and it contains \DeclareTextSymbol{\textmu}{LGR}{109} - while the latest lgrxenc.def v0.8 2013-05-30 is "backwards compatibility file for new lgrenc.def", and has fewer definitions (and \textmu is not present in it)
• the lgrenc.dfu I've downloaded is v0.2 2012-06-27; the latest is lgrenc.dfu v1.4.1 2013-07-18 and it has now a different location in the tree - but they both contain \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{03BC}{\textmu}
• textcomp.sty is needed, as it defines \DeclareTextSymbolDefault{\textmu}{TS1}

Well, hope this helps someone,
Cheers!

Answer 4

This error occurs when the tex editor file encoding and the document file encoding are not the same.

E.g. editor file encoding is ISO-8859-1, and the document has \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} command. Change the editor file encoding to UTF-8, and restart the editor.

(It is possible that your editor refers to file encoding as font encoding. For details, see the comments.)