Don't Understand Encoding & Language Settings

Edward Sappo

What should those settings be? Thanks for your assistance.

Claudia Frank

Language refers to programming languages and if you select one,
than the current document gets colored based on the programming language specifics.

Encoding refers to byte representation of text. A simple text, as written like
the one I’m typing right now, can be saved differently. An editor needs to know
this in advance to show the characters correctly.
Npp uses mozillas chardet library to find out how the text is saved and which codec
needs to be used to decode the file to show the proper characters.
But because of the problem that most codecs share multiple characters
npp (correctly, chardet library) might identify the wrong codec and therefore you have the menu to set it manually to the right one.
Or you can use it to convert it to another codec.

Cheers
Claudia