[texhax] Accents problem - weeeeird problem :-(

[Tony Mobily]

Hello,

I have recently switched from Windows to Linux (yay!).
I managed to have *everything* 100% optimised and great under Linux, a
part from (believe or not) LaTex!
I have a problem with accents, this is driving me totally up the wall. 

Here is what is happening.

I have a looong document written in Italian. In the document (that is
plain ascii, in tex format) I have accented letters like this:

" è che veramente non se ne può più."

To make it work with Latex, I included the following lines:

\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

My tex file looks like this (I only left as little as possible...):

---------------------------------------------------
\documentclass[a5paper,12pt,twoside,openright,final]{book}
%\documentclass[a5paper,12pt,twoside,openright,final]{report}
%\usepackage[light,first,bottomafter]{draftcopy}
\usepackage[italian]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{fancyheadings}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\setstretch{0.8}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{verbose,a5paper,tmargin=15mm,bmargin=15mm,lmargin=25mm,rmargin=25mm}
\hfuzz=6pt
                                                                                
\begin{document}
                                                                                
% TEST ONE - it DOESN'T WORK!
Ora vado, è è è che veramente non se ne può più.''
                                                                                
% TEST TWO - it works!
\input{TEST.txt}
                                                                                
\end{document}
------------------------------------------------

This is what TEST.txt looks like, included in the file above, contains:


---------------------------------------------------
Tony Mobily è nato a Pescara
---------------------------------------------------

When I try to compile my file, I get:

-----------------------------------------------------
[...]
\hoffset 0.0pt
\voffset 0.0pt
\mag 1000
(1in=72.27pt, 1cm=28.45pt)
-----------------------
! Extra \fi.
\add at accent ...\spacefactor }\accent #1\bbl at tempa
                                                  }\spacefactor
\accent at spac...
l.18 Ora vado, ^^c3^^a8
                        ^^c3^^a8 ^^c3^^a8 che veramente non se ne
pu^^c3^^b2...
 
? H
I'm ignoring this; it doesn't match any \if.
 
? H
I'm ignoring this; it doesn't match any \if.
 
?
! Extra \fi.
\add at accent ...\spacefactor }\accent #1\bbl at tempa
                                                  }\spacefactor
\accent at spac...
l.18 Ora vado, ^^c3^^a8 ^^c3^^a8 ^^c3^^a8
                                          che veramente non se ne
pu^^c3^^b2...
 
? H
I'm ignoring this; it doesn't match any \if.
 
?
! Missing $ inserted.
<inserted text>
                $
l.18 ...^c3^^a8 che veramente non se ne pu^^c3^^b2
                                                   pi^^c3^^b9.''
? H
I've inserted a begin-math/end-math symbol since I think
you left one out. Proceed, with fingers crossed.
 
[...]
-----------------------------------------------------------------

And so on.

In the end, the output of the line "Ora vado, è è è che veramente non se
ne può più." is absolutely stuffed, but the line "Tony Mobily è nato a
Pescara" (in the file "TEST.txt") is absolutely fine.

Now, the WEIRD stuff...
The point for me is that the file "TEST.txt" is somehow "correct",
whereas TONY.tex is not. I tried to understand why, and this is what I
discovered.

If I try to "cat" TEST.txt in Linux, I get:

----------------------------------------------------
[merc at merc raccolta_racconti]$ cat TEST.txt
Tony Mobily ? nato a Pescara,
 
 
[merc at merc raccolta_racconti]$
---------------------------------------------------

(notice the question mark)

If I open it with "vi", it displays fine, bit "vi" warns me:

"TEST.txt" [converted][dos] 3L, 37C 

Converted... from what?
if I try "less TEST.txt", I get:

-------------------------------------------------
Tony Mobily ènato a Pescara,
 
 
TEST.txt (END)
--------------------------------------------------

With NO space between "è" and "nato".

My question is: in what format is "TEST.txt" written? All this
"weirdness" doesn't happen with "TONY.tex", that seems to be a regular
old-fashioned ASCII file ("less", "vi" and "cat" see the accented
letters without any trouble). Unfortunately, LaTex doesn't seem to like
it... :-(

Am I missing something here? Have I not configured my latex correctly? I
have no idea what is going on... any help would be HIGHLY appreciated!

I attach the two files so that if you want you can open the actual
"TEST.txt" and enlighten me...

Thank you soooo much for any help,

Merc.

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