[tex-eplain] Problems with math symbols in pdftex outlines

[Rodolfo Medina]

Rodolfo Medina <rodolfo.medina at gmail.com> writes:

> With the pdftex commands `\pdfoutline' and `\pdfdest' I produce outlines in a
> left subwindow in the pdf output file.
>
> It seems to work fine, except that in math symbols the dollar is shown as it
> is: `$'.  More in general, other TeX commands like accents are not expanded.
>
> How to work that out?  Isn't it possible to write TeX math symbols within
> pdftex outlines?


karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) writes:

> My understanding is that the PDF outlines are handled as "plain text" in
> a system encoding, rather than being normally typeset.



When I typeset `continuit\`a', the outline shows `continuit{accent 18 a}'.


> I am not sure whether the encoding is specifiable in the document, if
> it's always UTF-8, if it depends on the current locale, or what.  If you
> or anyone feels like looking into this, I'd be glad to know more details.
>
> If the encoding is Unicode, I guess it would be theoretically possible
> to write straight-line math, except that virtually no fonts exist with
> Unicode math support today.  And the spacing would likely be awful even
> if the glyphs were there.


My table of contents that appears in a left subwindow is automatically
produced, so outlines should be able to understand and expand TeX code.

I use plain (pdf)TeX, so I wonder how pdflatex handles this problem.

Thanks for your reply.
Rodolfo