# Latexify generating incorrect output with accented strings
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** latex
**Created:** [February 5, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098 "2023-02-05T18:58:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Whyborn](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Whyborn)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2023, 6:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/1 "2023-02-05T18:58:39Z")
Hi,
Been hitting issues with Latexify-generated expressions when using accented characters. A simple example:
```julia
using Symbolics, Latexify
@variables x̄ ȳ z
latexify(x̄ + ȳ + z)
# Gives x\bar + z + ȳ
```
This is incorrect as LaTeX math environments place accents over the following character rather than the preceding (or at least in my environments?), so the \bar that should be over “x” is over the “+”. Is this easily fixed?
Additionally, I think it would be preferable to generate the typical LaTeX representation for accented characters even when the unicode character already exists as in ȳ, but not sure if this is possible.
---
### Author:  [@Sevi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sevi)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2023, 8:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/2 "2023-02-05T20:02:27Z")
On my system (Julia v1.8.5 with Latexify v0.15.18), I get from your code
```julia
L"\begin{equation}
\textnormal{\={x}} + z + \textnormal{\={y}}
\end{equation}
"
```
which also renders correctly in LaTeX (well, up to re-ordering the terms…). Could `latexify` be dependent on some system-specific things?
PS: I don’t have a lot of experience with Latexify so far (only when using it in some plots and it did have some hiccups there, but that seemed to be a problem with the plotting library), so I don’t know much about the internals of `latexify`.
---
### Author:  [@Whyborn](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Whyborn)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2023, 5:03am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/3 "2023-02-06T05:03:26Z")
Ah yep, I get the same output after updating my Julia version and Latexify. Change might’ve come from commit 187ad86 in Latexify. Turns out there was an easy fix.
---
### Author:  [@Sevi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Sevi)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2023, 7:45am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/4 "2023-02-06T07:45:12Z")
Nice! Thanks for the info
---
### Author:  [@LeePhillips](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/LeePhillips)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2023, 12:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/5 "2023-02-08T00:50:37Z")
> [@Whyborn](#):
>
> I think it would be preferable to generate the typical LaTeX representation for accented characters even when the unicode character already exists
Any particular reason? I think most people nowadays are using XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, which are fully Unicode aware.
---
### Author:  [@Whyborn](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Whyborn)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2023, 1:06am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/latexify-generating-incorrect-output-with-accented-strings/94098/6 "2023-02-08T01:06:46Z")
But not all LaTeX generators are fully unicode aware, so a method using only ASCII characters e.g. \bar{y} works for all users, but using Unicode characters only works for a subset of users. In any case, the newest version of Latexify (v0.15.18) generates “\textnormal{\={y}}” from
```julia
@variables ȳ
latexify(ȳ)
```
so it’s a moot point I think.