latex export and euro sign

[Steve Schwartz <s schwartz imperial ac uk>]

Hello. I've posted this to the texhax community, but it is just as
likely someone here will be able to help. For the record, I run gnumeric
1.6.3 on a suse 10.2 laptop.

I'm trying to use the latex export from gnumeric to include a table in
my latex document. I'd like to label a column with a euro symbol.
Although gnumeric will describe currency in euros, the latex export
doesn't recognise it and replaces it by a question mark :-(

So I tried to use a text string \texteuro in the gnumeric cell. In one
of my tables, that generated an unknown command \backslacstexteuro, and
I was able to define this in my preamble to actually generate a euro
sign. However, in a virtually identical gnumeric spreadsheet, the export
plugin generated $\backslash$texteuro which then fails to get recognised
as a command. I suspect that this latter behaviour is actually the
intended one as far as gnumeric is concerned, as it generates latex that
will compile and faithfully treats every character in a string,
includine "\", as a string character. I have noticed that the gnumeric
export is not always consistent in whether strings get surrounded by $'s
or not, and a few other quirks in bold, etc., but this is the first one
that is actually causing me grief.

In brief, does anyone have any experience in exporting a euro from
gnumeric and/or controlling how it handles backslashes and text?

Many thanks
Steve

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Professor Steven J Schwartz      Phone: +44-(0)20-7594-7660
Space and Atmospheric Physics    Fax:   +44-(0)20-7594-7772
The Blackett Laboratory          E-mail: s schwartz imperial ac uk
Imperial College London          Office: Huxley 6M70 
London SW7 2BW, U.K.             Web: http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~sjs
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