Help for an ANSI file

Alan Kilborn

user should be allowed to instruct Notepad++ to assume some specific UNICODE encoding rather than codepage

This might be relevant to that:

In the Settings > Preferences > New Document settings, if UTF-8 is chosen as your default encoding, you can also choose to always apply UTF-8 interpretation to files that Notepad++ opens and guesses are ANSI, not just to new files.

It seems a bit strange, or downright bad, that this option is buried in with the “New Document” settings?

Ekopalypse

@gstavi said in Help for an ANSI file:

I am also not convinced that it works 100%, and I have tried to understand this part of the code, but I have to admit that it is quite confusing for me.

I agree, it would be nice to have a possibility to force an encoding but
what I would like to have is to force a lexer to a specific encoding.
Like batch to OEM850 and python to utf8 …

Alan Kilborn

I did some more tangential playing around with this.

I found that N++ will open a “7-bit ASCII” file (not sure how to really say that!) that has a NUL character in it, as ANSI. All other characters are your typical A-z0-9.
But if the NUL is replaced with a SOH character, N++ opens it as UTF-8.
Curious about why it does it differently.

Of course, I’m mostly set up (I think) to have it work with UTF-8, but I’m less and less sure as the discussion goes on, what I should have selected in the Preferences to do this. :-)

Ekopalypse

My understanding, when having autodetection disabled, is the following:

A Scintilla buffer is initialized with _codepage = ::GetACP().
The entry point is

Notepad_plus::doOpen(const generic_string& fileName, bool isRecursive, bool isReadOnly, int encoding, const TCHAR *backupFileName, FILETIME fileNameTimestamp)

The following steps are performed

npp checks if the file is an html or xml file and if the encoding can be read from the prolog.
when it is loaded from a session, it gets the encoding that was used before
else
Npp tries to find out if it is Unicode or ANSI (I don’t understand this part of the code)
if it is a Unicode, the encoding is set accordingly
otherwise Npp checks if “open ANSI as utf8” is configured and sets either ANSI or utf8

guy038

Hello, @alan-kilborn and All,

Well, Alan, I guess the problem and there is a real bug !

First, I suppose that, in your Settings > Preferences... > New Document > Encoding :

The UTF-8 encoding ( Not the UTF-8 with BOM one ) is selected
The Apply to opened ANSI files option is selected

And in Settings > Preferences... > New Document > MISC. :

The Autodetect character encoding option is UNCHECKED

Note Alan, that is also my own configuration, too !

Now, let’s suppose that you open an N++ new file => So, in the status bar, the UTF-8 encoding is displayed : logical !

Now just write the string ABCD, save this new file as Test.txt and close Notepad++

While opening this file, any editor, without any other indication, cannot tell which is its right encoding :

It could be encoded with four bytes 41424344 in an ANSI file ( so any Windows encoding as Win-1252, Win-1251, … because the ASCII part, from 00 to 7F is identical
It could be encoded, also, with four bytes 41424344 in a N++ UTF-8 file ( so without a BOM ). Indeed, with the UTF-8 encoding, any character with code-point under \x{0080} is coded with in 1 byte only, from 00 to 7F

But, as we have the setting Apply to opened ANSI files set, when you re-open the Test.txt file, again, you should see the UTF-8 indication in the status bar

And, adding the SOH character ( \x{01} ) , or any character till \x{1F} ( I verified ), between AB and CD does not change anything. The encoding will remain UTF-8 !

But, adding the NUL character change does change the encoding as ANSI, which is in contradiction with our user settings ! However, this particular case ( NUL char + pure ASCII chars, only ) does not really matter as current contents file do not change when switching from ANSI to UTF-8 and vice-versa, anyway !

Now, what’s more annoying is that the presence of the NUL character still forces the ANSI encoding, even if a character, with code over \x{007F}, is added to the file :-(( For instance, if you add the very common French char é, to get the string ABNULCDé and save this file with an UTF-8 encoding, when you re-open this file, the encoding is wrongly changed to ANSI. So, the wrong string ABNULCDÃ© is displayed !

Remember that the contents of Test.txt file, the string ABNULCDé, after saving, are 4142004344C3A9 with the UTF-8 encoding ( This same string, would be coded 4142004344E9 in an ANSI file )

So, although files with NUL characters are not common in classical text files, I suppose that this bug need creating an issue. What is your feeling about it ?

Best Regards,

guy038

Alan Kilborn

@guy038 said in Help for an ANSI file:

First, I suppose that, in your Settings > Preferences… > New Document > Encoding

Right on the settings assumptions, except for me The Autodetect character encoding option is CHECKED

So, although files with NUL characters are not common in classical text files, I suppose that this bug need creating an issue. What is your feeling about it ?

Well, I was just sort of experimenting around. NUL characters are not something I typically use. Although I do have the feeling that if Scintilla allows them in the buffer (and clearly it does because I can see a black-boxed “NUL”), then Notepad++ itself should try and “do the right thing” (whatever that is) about them.

Alan Kilborn

But…
It does seem like I as a user should be able to tell the software: "If a file can’t officially be identified via a BOM, then open it as ‘xxxxxxx’ " (UTF-8 for me! but YMMV).

andrecool-68

@Ekopalypse An example of an error:

Ekopalypse

@andrecool-68
Npp has no chance to find out what encoding it is, neither does AkelPad.

What AkelPad does is to save the selected encoding in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Akelsoft\AkelPad\Recent.

If you open enough other documents, more than 10, and you have not changed the default setting, you will see that AkelPad opens your batch file with ANSI encoding as well.

andrecool-68

@Ekopalypse
In AkelPad you can reopen a document 1000 times and re-save 1000 times without breaking the file content, and Notepad ++ cannot boast of that.
I mean working with encoding))

Alan Kilborn

@andrecool-68

I think you missed the point of @Ekopalypse

I saw somewhere I can’t find now about someone wanting to remember caret-position in a file that had been previously open (at some point) with N++, but is currently closed.

This current encoding discussion seems a candidate for same.
Meaning: Create/maintain some sort of database for this info (encoding, caret position) and then when a file is opened, see if the file was previously encountered; if so restore last-known encoding selection and caret.

Ekopalypse

@andrecool-68

But only as long as you have not opened more than the maximum number of files to be saved.

Create/maintain some sort of database for this info

But I see a disadvantage - maintenance. How to keep this kind of db clean. I would say that during runtime of npp one can expect it but
after a restart it will become a nightmare to keep it clean.
How would one handle temporarily inaccessible files, moved or deleted files.
On the other side if you can configure an extension or lexer to always
open a file in a specific encoding then I assume most of the issues are solved.