[OS X TeX] Bibtex and non-ASCII characters

[Adam R. Maxwell]

On Nov 10, 2007, at 2:47 PM, Markus S wrote:

> Hi,
>
> is there any smart way to deal with non-ASCII characters like the &  
> symbol when using a GUI-based reference software (be it Endnote,  
> Bookends, Papers, or BibDesk) and .bib file.

Well, "&" /is/ part of the ASCII character set.  It just needs to be  
escaped in TeX.

> Currently, I am sometimes replacing the & symbol with \& within  
> Endnote, sometimes in the .bib file. Doing it always in Endnote  
> would be safer way but browsing Endnote this looks a bit odd.
>
> My (planned) way out is to use a Perl script that converts all non- 
> ASCII characters in the .bib file exported from Endnote so that  
> things work in Latex. I have the Perl script, the tough job is to  
> come up with a list of all characters that have to be replaced (and  
> I first have to reverse all the characters I've already fixed within  
> Endnote).

You could do this in BibDesk with regular expression find and replace  
or AppleScript, which may be easier than manipulating the .bib file  
directly.  BibDesk also converts non-ASCII characters such as ø or ü  
to the appropriate TeX sequence if you want (see the Files preference  
pane).

-- 
adam