Text file format

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Howard Brazee - 27 May 2008 17:26 GMT

I have used Text Wrangler to change the character coding and line ends
of some documents that I have imported from Windows systems but which
did not display correctly in Text Edit.

I saw lot of options, and decided to look at a OS X generated text
file to model my documents.

But the amount of options Text Wrangler has leads me to ask advice
about different formats for different uses. For instance, a document
that I need to copy directly back and forth between OS X and Windows
might be different from one I use elsewhere.

Any recommendations about when a particular character coding and/or
LF/FF settings are appropriate?

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Chris Ridd - 27 May 2008 21:15 GMT

> I have used Text Wrangler to change the character coding and line ends
> of some documents that I have imported from Windows systems but which
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> Any recommendations about when a particular character coding and/or
> LF/FF settings are appropriate?

What app(s) are you intending to use the files with on Windows?

Cheers,

Chris

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Howard Brazee - 27 May 2008 21:38 GMT

>> Any recommendations about when a particular character coding and/or
>> LF/FF settings are appropriate?
>
>What app(s) are you intending to use the files with on Windows?

The ones I use now are Ultra-Edit and Office. Someday I'd like to
set up my Mac with compatible Java with work though (they use
JBuilder, but I may be using Eclipse) - although the apps run on Suns
under Unix. I have also copied my Opera bookmarks, although I don't
need to do so with Firefox due to a nifty add-on that synchronizes via
the web.

Besides those, I'm hoping to advance my education in the many options
available on Macs for file formats.

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Heath Raftery - 28 May 2008 01:42 GMT

Line endings are easy:

LF: Unix, including Mac OS X
CR+LF: DOS, Windows
CR: Old Mac OS

Where LF is a line feed and CR is a carriage return (DOS uses two
characters).

Since the pattern is so simple, there are no real dramas converting
between one and the other. Just use that which is most convenient.
I always use LF since all the unix tools will have no dramas and it
is simple to add or change to a CR for apps that don't get it.

Encodings I don't know much about. As I understand it, if you want
to be universal (lots of characters, lots of support), go with a
UTF format like UTF-8 or UTF-16. If you specifically want to support
a certain language, go for the encoding for that language (eg.
ISO-2022-JP (JIS) for Japanese). If you want a good, widely
compatible encoding that covers all of the characters used in
Western Europe but doesn't have the complexity of UTF, use
ISO 8859-1 (Latin 1). There are adaptions of this encoding (-2, -3,
-4 etc.) that add more exotic characters.

Finally, use Mac OS Roman or Windows-1250 only if you want to be
compatible with those OS's.

HTH

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Howard Brazee - 28 May 2008 14:55 GMT

>Line endings are easy:
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>Where LF is a line feed and CR is a carriage return (DOS uses two
>characters).

That I understood.

>Since the pattern is so simple, there are no real dramas converting
>between one and the other. Just use that which is most convenient.
>I always use LF since all the unix tools will have no dramas and it
>is simple to add or change to a CR for apps that don't get it.

So there are Mac applications that don't adjust. I wasn't sure about
that with my testing, other than some text documents I could open with
Text Edit and the text would be in paragraphs - with some wrong
characters, but when I opened it with Text Wrangler, they would have
super long lines with the correct characters.

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Mac Forum / General / General / May 2008

Text file format