After installing latex-unicode the file utf8.def is missing from the directory /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-unicode This results in the following compilation error from LaTeX: (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-unicode/ucs.sty (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-unicode/uni-global.def)) (/usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base/inputenc.sty ! LaTeX Error: File `utf8.def' not found. Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: def) Enter file name: The other file utf8x.def is installed. As per a suggestion from the gentoo forum, doing the following two steps fixes the problem: 1. cp /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-unicode/utf8x.def /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/latex-unicode/utf8.def 2. texhash But this is really a quick&dirty workaround. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
Bump! Bug is still not fixed, though it was reported a year ago. Lazy package maintainer, knockknockknock!!
Well, after letting off some steam, I've spent some more time looking into this issue. The README file tells us to use \usepackage[utf8x.def]{inputenc}. It works with utf8.def using miktex, though. Other distributions seem to create a symlink automatically (maybe Debian, SUSE, but I'm not 100% sure). After further investigations I found out that this behaviour depends on the latex version or package used (modern latex versions have utf8.def, while utf8x.def is provided by the latex-unicode package). It would still be better if the user was informed about this by the ebuild or if the symlink was created automatically. A small notice would be sufficient and could save the user a lot of time finding out what's wrong. At least I've wasted at least half an hour digging up information and writing about this.
Created attachment 96390 [details] Modified ebuild so that it creates a symlink and executes texhash after installation. Modified ebuild which creates a symlink and executes texhash after installation. Tested, works ;-)
thanks for tracking down that issue. however, that fix you proposed is really not preferred because we can't track the utf8x.def file in portage because it is done in pkg_postinst. does a simple symlink in src_install() work? that seems to be how debian has dealt with this: +latex-ucs (20041017-1) unstable; urgency=low + + * New upstream version with a few more character definitions. + * debian/rules: Converted to cdbs. + * debian/control: Added Build-Dependency console-data to get unicode name + database at build time. + * debian/control: Fixed capitalization of short descriptions. + * debian/rules: Do not ship the uni-*.def files from the orig.tar.gz, but + create them at package build time, since we may patch the config files. + * debian/rules: Added patch system for config files. + * debian/config-patches/01_HYPHEN.patch: Add HYPHEN (0x2010). (see #303752) + * Upstream changed utf8.def to utf8x.def; document this in + latex-ucs.README.Debian, add symbolic link to maintain compatibility to + already existing documents.
That's perfectly normal: utf8.def is the unicode support provided by teTeX while utf8x.def and ucs.sty are extended versions of the former, supporting more characters, and provided by the latex-unicode package.
