[tex-live] Howto include unicode character?

[Robin Fairbairns]

Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have recent texlive. 
> 
> \documentclass[10pt,a4paper,english]{article}
> \usepackage{ucs}
> \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
> \begin{document}
> What is π
> \end{document}
> 
> I get:
> ! Undefined control sequence.
> \u-default-960 #1->\textpi 

there is no such command as \textpi

> Any clues?

a bug in (some part of) the ucs.sty bundle.  unfortunately, the bundle
is no longer supported.  (it will in the "unsupported" part of the next
texlive, but the situation wasn't obvious a year ago.)

to deal with the problem, put

  \DeclareTextCommandDefault\textpi{\ensuremath{\pi}}

in the preamble of your document.  in general, those things don't work
without \usepackage{textcomp} but (a) i don't know if ucs.sty loads it
by default, and (b) it's not necessary in this case, of course.

robin

[general disclaimer: apologies in advance for sloth in replying -- i'm
rather ill.]