---
parent: Decision Records
nav_order: 5
---
# Fully Support UTF-8 Only For LaTeX Files

## Context and Problem Statement

The feature [search for citations](https://github.com/JabRef/user-documentation/issues/210) displays the content of LaTeX files. The LaTeX files are text files and might be encoded arbitrarily.

## Considered Options

* Support UTF-8 encoding only
* Support ASCII encoding only
* Support \(nearly\) all encodings

## Decision Outcome

Chosen option: "Support UTF-8 encoding only", because comes out best \(see below\).

### Positive Consequences

* All content of LaTeX files are displayed in JabRef

### Negative Consequences

* When a LaTeX files is encoded in another encoding, the user might see strange characters in JabRef

## Pros and Cons of the Options

### Support UTF-8 encoding only

* Good, because covers most tex file encodings
* Good, because easy to implement
* Bad, because does not support encodings used before around 2010

### Support ASCII encoding only

* Good, because easy to implement
* Bad, because does not support any encoding at all

### Support \(nearly\) all encodings

* Good, because easy to implement
* Bad, because it relies on Apache Tika's `CharsetDetector`, which resides in `tika-parsers`.

  This causes issues during compilation \(see [https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pull/3421#issuecomment-524532832](https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pull/3421#issuecomment-524532832)\).

  Example: `error: module java.xml.bind reads package javax.activation from both java.activation and jakarta.activation`.
