[XeTeX] Help with UTF8 in XeTeX

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Hello! I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting something stupid, but I hope
someone can point me in the right direction. Take this very simple
document (the source is UTF8 encoded):

*******************
\documentclass{memoir}

\usepackage{ucs}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}

\begin{document}
101 × 101
\end{document}
*******************

In case it doesn’t go through, the entire content  is “101 times 101”,
with the unicode multiplication character  (U+00D7) instead of
“times”.  This also  happens with other characters I’ve tried, for
example “é” (lower case e with acute accent). Other non-ASCII
characters, for example the curly quotes, don’t generate the error
message, but are NOT displayed in the output PDF.

When I compile it  with xelatex (and lualatex, for that matter), I get
a “! Package utf8x Error: MalformedUTF-8sequence.” message (whole log
after my signature).

I spent a few hours unsuccessfully trying to find a problem with the
ucs and inputenc packages, before noticing that the exact same code
seems to work perfectly with pdftex: the multiplication symbol is
displayed without error, as are the “high” curly quotes (lower quotes,
like "„", generate a “Command \guillemotleft unavailable in encoding
OT1”, which I assume is caused by the font encoding).

(I would prefer to use XeTeX for its font support: I have a Very Good
Reason(TM) to make a document with many TTF fonts and I never could
wrap my brain around pdflatex’s procedure for using TTF fonts.)

-- Bogdan Butnaru


$ xelatex test.tex
This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.2-0.9995.2 (TeX Live 2009/Debian)
 restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./test.tex
LaTeX2e <2009/09/24>
Babel <v3.8l> and hyphenation patterns for english, usenglishmax, dumylang, noh
yphenation, french, basque, romanian, irish, coptic, serbian, turkish, welsh, e
speranto, uppersorbian, estonian, indonesian, interlingua, icelandic, kurmanji,
 slovenian, loaded.
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/memoir/memoir.cls
Document Class: memoir 2009/09/21 v1.61803398b configurable book, report, artic
le document class
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/oberdiek/ifpdf.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/ifxetex/ifxetex.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/oberdiek/ifluatex.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/etex-pkg/etex.sty)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/memoir/mem10.clo)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/memoir/mempatch.sty))
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ucs/ucs.sty
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ucs/data/uni-global.def))
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ucs/utf8x.def)) (./test.aux)
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/latex/ucs/ucsencs.def)

! Package utf8x Error: MalformedUTF-8sequence.

See the utf8x package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.7 101 × 1
            01