Text Formatting ⇒ Character encoding and weird quotations

[acupsych]

We have recently started using TeXnicCenter as the editor for our staff that use a PC. It came to our attention that in many cases the quotation marks were being transformed into weird symbols like this: �Quotes�

Our adviser diagnosed this as a mismatch of the "code page" or "character encoding." Our text files are encoded using Unicode, specifically UTF-8. However, the current stable version of TeXnicCenter, version 1, does not default to UTF-8. The newest alpha version does, but I cannot entrust my company manuscripts to an alpha version editor. My question is whether there is a way to force TeXnicCenter version 1 to default to UTF-8. Thanks!

[nlct]

Have you used the inputenc package with the utf8 option?

Code: Select all

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

regards
Nicola Talbot

[acupsych]

Being new to this environment, I have not used the inputenc package with the utf8 option. Following your link, it appear that this is an addon for LaTeX. Is this a work around to force TeXnicCenter version 1 to default to UTF-8?

Thanks very much for your help.

[nlct]

The inputenc package isn't specific to TeXnicCenter. Using inputenc tells LaTeX that the source file is using the named encoding (UTF8 in this case). Getting your editor (TeXnicCenter in your case) to use UTF8 is a separate step. I don't know much about TeXnicCenter (it's a long time since I've used it), but I assumed the problem was that LaTeX didn't know what encoding TeXnicCenter was using. There's a section on inputenc in my beginners tutorial, but that tutorial assumes you're using TeXWorks. As far as I can remember, TeXnicCenter allows you to have templates, so you could create a template that includes inputenc. If it turns out that TeXnicCenter isn't actually saving the file as UTF8, then someone with more knowledge of that editor will need to help.

Regards
Nicola Talbot