Umlauts in LaTeX export

[Richard Lawrence <richard.lawrence@berkeley.edu>]

Hi all,

I don't think this is a bug so much as an unfortunate consequence of
expected behavior, but I wanted to document it here for the sake of
future mailing list searches, because I didn't find anything about it
myself.  (If someone has a better solution than the one I propose,
please clue me in!)

To add an umlaut/trema/diaeresis to a letter in LaTeX, I use the \"
command, as in:

G\"{o}del

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Org export treats both `{}' and `"'
specially, this will be exported to LaTeX as:

G\''\{o\}del

It isn't sufficient to surround the \"{o} with math mode delimiters, e.g.,

G\(\"{o}\)del

even though this will prevent Org from escaping the brackets and
converting the double-quote, because the command doesn't seem to produce
output in math mode.  (The compiled file will read "Gdel".)

So, the work-around I've come up with is to use an \mbox inside math
mode, which prevents Org from doing the escapes/conversions:

G\(\mbox{\"{o}}\)del

A bit ugly, but it produces the correct output.

Hope that helps someone!  And again, if there's a better way, please let
me know!

Best,
Richard