On 06/02/2015 05:54 PM, John Culleton wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jun 2015 11:45:35 -0400 John Culleton wrote:

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I want to insert the string 8 1/2 x 11 in my text. Here is my test file: ---------------------------- \starttext \math{8^1_2} × 11 inch, \stoptext ---------------------------- I am using texlive 2014 mkiv.

Hi John, me too (current version: 2014.05.21 22:04 ;-)) and both samples (above and below) compile fine.

I also tried this: ----------------------- \starttext 8 1/2 × 11 inch, \stoptext --------------------- The error message is the same: ------------------------------- system > tex > error on line 2 in file /usr/local/active/hall/ftp/test.tex: String contains an invalid utf-8 sequence ...

Are you sure that character encoding in your file is utf8? I can cause this error message, but only after replacing character encoding in file with ISO 8859-15. BTW, your file is in /usr/local. I thought that in Unix there was no place like /home :-). I hope it helps, Pablo -- http://www.ousia.tk

On 02 Jun 2015, at 21:08, John Culleton wrote: […] Everything works. But there is something wrong with my math code. There is no horizontal bar between the 1 and the 2. I guess I will study "The TEXbook" some more.

Hi John, It is a good idea to read again The TeXBook, but actually I wonder why should TeX put a horizontal line between 1 and 2 in your code? What you are typesetting in mathmode is just 8 followed by 1 in exponent (uppserscript) and 2 in subscript, therefore there shouldn’t be any fraction bar between 1 and 2. If the font you use has the character, what you want to typeset is the character U+00BD for 1/2 or, if you want to use mathmode, either of the solutions below (wtach the slight differences between the three versions): \starttext $8\tfrac{1}{2} × 11$ inch $8\frac{1}{2} × 11$ inch $8{1 \over 2} × 11$ inch \stoptext Indeed you can replace $…$ with \math{…}. Best regards: OK