This dialog box appears when you select the
Browse button menu / Reopen with encoding...menu or
Browse button menu / Set text output
options... You can also select a side by giving it
the focus and then select the top menu
Side / Reopen with encoding...
In Text Comparisons or Text Edition, it enables you to
change the encoding in which the current text
document will be loaded or saved. In Folder
Comparisons, the options will applied on text files the
software will try to open.
Specifying the loading encoding will compute again the
comparison or reload the text file(s). Specifying the output
encoding will check that the current output text is valid with
respect to the chosen output encoding but will not touch the
text file(s) yet.
Options present in both dialog boxes
Allow approximations: allows the
conversion algorithm (toward or from Unicode
representation) to make some approximations, for example,
Mac Roman encoding misses some characters of Windows
Western page, these missing characters may not be
extremely significant if you just compare files, or if
you actually need the conversion to be done. The
comparison tool will then show what are the actual
differences because of the approximation (both in folder
and text file modes).
Use these settings for all panels: the
checkbox is present for comparison and merges only (not
for single file view/edit mode). It allows you to specify
the same options for all the panels in a single
click.
Encoding: this is the encoding used to
load or save files when no other rule apply. Note that in
the save box, the encoding lists contains variant of
Unicode format with (default) or without signature.
Text input options dialog box
Ignore Unicode signature: in some
circonstances, you may want to de-activate the automatic
detection of Unicode signature, e.g. on files using these
signatures for another purpose
Text output options dialog box:
If the source files [...] have coherent
detectable encoding, use deduced encoding: you
may want to also generate files in a particular default
encoding, however when a encoding was signaled by a
signature (currently only Unicode signatures) or that the
encoding used detectable structures (all UTF have quite
remakable structures, only UTF-7 does not) you may want
to keep it. It allows you to mix Unicode files with
native encoding files in your folders without the risk of
changing your Unicode files to native encoding when
copying/merging them
Propose only choices ensuring safe re-loading
given loading encoding options: this option
allows you to limit the list of encodings to those which
ensure you that when later re-loading the files they will
be still be interpreted in the same way (for
example in folder comparisons). If you prevented the
interpretation of signature in Text input options dialog
box, it will limit you to the default loading encoding
for output. If you allowed the interpretation of
signatures, it will allow you all Unicode signed
encodings and the default loading encoding.
Line endings: this combo box allows you
to specify whether you want to keep the line endings
as-is (default) or whether you want to enforce them to a
particular format (Unix, Mac, Windows). It allows you to
copy seamlessly files between different OS. Note that the
option applies during the save operation (not during
edition).
Ellié Computing Merge supports around one hundred
different character encodings among the mostly used. It is
frequently tested against files from various encodings, if you
have trouble with particular files and encodings please contact
the
support
team by creating a support ticket.
Press
F1 or click on the
Help button while in this dialog box will show
this topic.