The problem is that your utf-8 text doesn't use normal "eacute", but
rather "e + combining acute accant", and pdfTeX will never be able to
handle that.
Ok, understood, good to know it.
TeX needs accent specification before the character. A combining
accent after the character cannot be handled, at least not in pdfTeX -
XeTeX and LuaTeX should be fine with it.
Voilą, here's the problem. We're having different behaviors usign XeTeX, while ConTeXt works the same on thwo machines. My XeConTeXt works ok. The one on Miriam's machine not.
Can you try to convert the text again using
pdftotext -enc UTF-8 your-pdf-document.pdf
and copy that text into the main document?
We have already done it. This solved the problems with accented glyphs but not with other glyphs
(apostrpohes, dots)
2. if we compile with XeConTeXt the resulting pdf simply skips the accents
(e.g an accented glyph is rendered non accented)
The default font (LM) doesn't work properly with any version of
ConTeXt prior to 2007.09.28. But if you load some system font, the
accents should work OK.
Ah! that's exactly so. We are experiencing the difference: the problem disappears with system fonts.
If you are using XeTeX, I strongly recommend you to use both the same
version of ConTeXt. The one from January and the one form September
differ considerably.
Ok.
Thanks a lot for your support
-a-