Minimum Profit character encoding support
This document describes the character encodings supported by the Minimum Profit text editor and the performed autodetection tests.
None (default locale)
The following steps are performed on input:
- If any utf BOM is found, it sets the document encoding to any of
utf-8bom,utf-16le,utf-16be,utf-32leorutf-32be; - Otherwise, if an explicit utf-8 sequence is detected, it sets the document encoding to
utf-8; - Otherwise, if some character is found with the 7 bit set (that is, a non-ASCII character), but does not conform to the utf-8 standard, it sets the document encoding to
8bit; - In any other case, no encoding is forced, and the file is read using the locale conversion functions.
On output, the document is saved using the locale conversion functions.
utf-8
The following steps are performed on input:
- If an utf-8 BOM is found, it sets the document encoding to
utf-8bom; - In any other case, utf-8 is assumed as the character encoding and any invalid character combination is converted to the
?character.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-8 encoding without a BOM prefix.
utf-8bom
On input, if no utf-8 BOM is found, the encoding is still assumed to be
utf-8, but not changed to it.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-8 encoding with a BOM prefix.
8bit
No character conversion is done on input nor output.
iso8859-1
Characters are treated as being encoded using the iso8859-1 character set,
that is, no real conversion is done. This mode is really identical to
8bit.
Aliases: latin1.
utf-16
On input, it tries to determine the endianness of the document by reading
the BOM; if a valid one is found, encoding is set to utf-16le or
utf-16be; if none is found, it assumes utf-16le.
On output, it behaves like utf-16le.
Aliases: ucs-2.
utf-16le
On input, it assumes utf-16 little endian characters.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-16 little endian encoding with a BOM prefix.
Aliases: ucs-2le.
utf-16be
On input, it assumes utf-16 big endian characters.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-16 big endian encoding with a BOM prefix.
Aliases: ucs-2be.
utf-32
On input, it tries to determine the endianness of the document by reading
the BOM; it a valid one is found, encoding is set to utf-32le or
utf-32be; if none is found, it assumes utf-32le.
On output, it behaves like utf-32le.
Aliases: ucs-4.
utf-32le
On input, it assumes utf-32 little endian characters.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-32 little endian encoding with a BOM prefix.
Aliases: ucs-4le.
utf-32be
On input, it assumes utf-32 big endian characters.
On output, it saves the document using the utf-32 big endian encoding with a BOM prefix.
Aliases: ucs-4be.
msdos-437
On input and output, uses the MSDOS 437 (original IBM PC) code page.
msdos-850
On input and output, uses the MSDOS 850 (DOS Latin 1) code page.
windows-1252
On input and output, uses the Windows-1252 code page, also misnomed everywhere as ANSI. Many texts that claim to be iso8859-1 are really windows-1252.
Iconv support
If Minimum Profit is compiled with support for the iconv library, many
more encodings will be available. There is no easy way of knowing their
names; the underlying system may provide the iconv --list command to have
a list.
End of line markers
Though not directly related to character encodings, the Minimum Profit text
editor remembers the end of line marker found inside each document, and use
it when saving it afterwards. This helps in maintaining document
compatibility and portability. This behaviour can be disabled by setting
the mp.config.keep_eol configuration directive to 0.
ttcdt <dev@triptico.com>