BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Help needed: German umlaut "ß"

[b00029955]

Hi,
My knowledge with LaTex and BibTex is at intermediate level, I have been working for days but still not able to get "ß" rendered properly in the Bibliography (BibTex) I tried {\ss} but it's rendering it as "ss" instead of "ß", required packages are included in tex file there are no build errors but still not getting right output. System: Windows

[frabjous]

Hmm. Could you provide a sample document that produces the error, making one up if need be. \ss should work for the Eszett. (Umlauts are the accents on ä or ö, etc. The Eszett ß is not an umlaut.)

Do you get the problem even with a very minimal document such as this:

(test.bib)

Code: Select all

@Article { testref,
  author = {Kurt G{\"o}del},
  title = {Der Stra{\ss}e},
  journal = {Au{\ss}ersein},
  volume = {1},
  year = {2010},
  pages = {1--2}
}

(test.tex)

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
   I shall refer to \cite{testref}.
    \bibliographystyle{plain}
    \bibliography{test}
\end{document}

For me, the umlaut and the Eszetts (ß) work just fine with these simple samples. Do they work for you?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

required packages are included in tex file

Sure? I would use the inputenc package.

Stefan

[b00029955]

Thanks for the replies.

My apologies, I don't have any knowledge about German.

Bibtex Author entry
author = {Gain, James and Marais, Patrick and Stra{\ss}er , Wolfgang},

Output: GAIN, J., MARAIS, P., AND STRASSER

tex packages:
\usepackage[german]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

[b00029955]

And \bibliographystyle used in my document is

\bibliographystyle{acmtrans}

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

fine, you're already using the necessary packages. I just recommend to replace german by ngerman, this suits our current writing after the last reform.

Since you're loading inputenc, you could just write ß directly in the text.

I noticed that you're using capital letters for the names - there's not capital ß. Germans write SS for a capital ß. So, perhaps there's no problem.

Stefan

[b00029955]

@frabjous : Yes the minimal sample is working fine, so is it due to multiple authors' names? or different bib. style? i am not able to figure out the problem..those special characters are getting rendered fine even with all tex files of the thesis, only problem is with bib file.

[b00029955]

@Stefan: thanks for that input. So the problem was not with Bibtex but with my lack of knowledge of German . Thanks for the help.

[frabjous]

I think the problem may have to do with that bib style in particular, because it puts the names in small caps, and I'm not sure there is a small cap version of the Eszett, at least not in Computer Modern. In that case, I think 'SS' is an acceptable substitute. (Or so it says in Wikipedia, which is never wrong. )

I get 'SS' in smallcaps, even if I write "ß" directly in the bib file.

If it's really important to you, try:

author = {Gain, James and Marais, Patrick and Stra{\upshape{\ss}}er , Wolfgang}

P.S. I see this has already been covered, but I have actually seen small caps Eszetts in other fonts. There are some examples here.)

[b00029955]

author = {Gain, James and Marais, Patrick and Stra{\upshape{\ss}}er , Wolfgang}

Brilliant ! It worked! Thanks a lot