Fail to build a Thai book using pdflatex when notebook/md has Thai characters as title or header. Need some help

I’m trying to build a pdf from the Jupyter notebook by doing…

• Create a test book using ‘$ jupyter-book create myb’
• Add some Thai characters into ‘_config.yml’ (title and author)
• Add some Thai characters into ‘intro.md’ (Header 1), ‘notebooks.ipynb’ (Header 1, Header 2, text-body), ‘markdown.md’ (Header 1, Header 2, text-body)
• Build the html using ‘$ jupyter-book build myb/’ <-- No problem. Show Thai language correctly.
• Create the pdf using ‘$ jupyter-book build myb/ --builder pdflatex’ <-- There is some problems in the book title, author, chapter title.

Expectation I expected the book to properly show the Thai characters as on the website (image below)

Problem Thai characters in the book title, author, chapter title (Header1 ,2 ,3 …) displays incorrectly (image below).

I’ve attached both the test book (the source files after modifications mentioned above) and the console output after trying to create the pdf.

• book source

• console_output

Error: `Package pgfplots Warning: running in backwards compatibility mode (unsuitable t ick labels; missing features). Consider writing \pgfplotsset{compat=1.18} into your preamble. on input line 93.

geometry driver: auto-detecting geometry detected driver: xetex (./book.out) (./book.out) (/usr/local/texlive/2022/texmf-dist/tex/generic/stringenc/se-ascii-print.def) Missing character: There is no ไ (U+0E44) in font [FreeSansBold.otf]/OT:script= latn;language=dflt;! Missing character: There is no ท (U+0E17) in font [FreeSansBold.otf]/OT:script= latn;language=dflt;! Missing character: There is no ย (U+0E22) in font [FreeSansBold.otf]/OT:script= latn;language=dflt;!`

• output_pdf

List my environment

Jupyter Book : 0.13.0 nbconvert : 6.5.0 Sphinx-external-toc : 0.2.4 MyST-Parser : 0.15.2 MyST-NB : 0.13.2 Sphinx Book Theme : 0.8.1 Jupyter-Cache : 0.4.3 NbClient : 0.5.13

Version of Python. : 3.8 OS : MacOS 12.3.1

[tubekmtil]

@AakashGfude It doesn’t work, probably because it was placed in the wrong place (I’ve never used latex before (-_-);;; )

From the comments that you and @mmcky sent to me, I have changed the preamble from

\setmainfont{FreeSerif}[
   Extension = .otf,
   UprightFont = *,
   ItalicFont = *Italic,
   BoldFont = *Bold,
   BoldItalicFont = *BoldItalic
]
\setsansfont{FreeSans}[
   Extension = .otf,
   UprightFont = *,
   ItalicFont = *Oblique,
   BoldFont = *Bold,
   BoldItalicFont = *BoldOblique,
]
\setmonofont{FreeMono}[
   Extension = .otf,
   UprightFont = *,
   ItalicFont = *Oblique,
   BoldFont = *Bold,
   BoldItalicFont = *BoldOblique,
]

– to -->

\setsansfont{Norasi}[
  Extension = .otf,
  UprightFont = *,
  ItalicFont = *-Italic,
  BoldFont = *-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = *-BoldItalic,
  Scale = 1.1,
  Script = Default,
  Mapping = tex-text
]
\setmainfont{Laksaman}[
  Extension = .otf,
  UprightFont = *,
  ItalicFont = *-Italic,
  BoldFont = *-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = *-BoldItalic,
  Scale = 1.1,
  Script = Default,
  Mapping = tex-text
]
\setmonofont{Loma}[
  Extension = .otf,
  UprightFont = *,
  ItalicFont = *-Oblique,
  BoldFont = *-Bold,
  BoldItalicFont = *-BoldOblique,
  Scale = 1,
  Script = Default,
  Mapping = tex-text
]

It works well !!! as shown below.

Thank you both of you (@mmcky, @AakashGfude) for pointing me in the right direction.

[mmcky]

@tubekmtil I had a quick search and came across

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/113359/latex-and-thai-language

which may contain some helpful hints for you.

My suggestion would be to edit:

1. _build/latex/book.tex using xelatex to see if you can get the LaTeX side of things working, then
2. add then add the needed adjustments to your latex preamble via sphinx configuration in _config.yml.

https://jupyterbook.org/en/stable/advanced/sphinx.html#manual-sphinx-configuration

and the sphinx docs for a custom preamble

https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/latex.html

so it would look something like

sphinx
  config:
    latex_elements:
      preamble: >
        <preamble>

and that get’s added to the preamble.

@AakashGfude any other tips / ideas here?