I recently started using emacs on Android in Termux. My projects feature some chinese characters, which are displayed there just fine.
When later opening the same file in Emacs on Windows, I was disappointed to see them displayed as \xxxx
I am not sure how to search for a solution, because I do not what the problem is.
The only thing I found related to my problem is this:
Unicode characters in emacs term-mode
but it did no help me solve the issue.
You can tell what's going on by looking at the first few characters in the mode line. In Termux, it says UUU, but in Windows it says DDU. These three characters stand for:
the coding system for keyboard input
the coding system for terminal output
the coding system of the file in the buffer
U stands for UTF-8, while D stands for various DOS code pages. (You can find this using M-x list-coding-systems. This is all described in the Mode Line section of the Emacs manual.)
So this means that Emacs is reading the file correctly, but it thinks that the terminal is unable to display the Chinese characters, so it uses the \uxxxx notation as a fallback. I'm not sure how to get this to work properly in a Windows terminal, but try M-x set-terminal-coding-system with utf-8 - it might just work.
As an aside, if you run Emacs as a "normal" Windows application instead of in a terminal, the characters should display correctly automatically, so if there is a particular problem preventing you from doing so, it might be worth trying to fix that instead.
I have a text file encoded in Windows-1250. I'm using Windows 7 EN.
I would like to iterate through this file line by line in Perl code with
print. In console I cannot see the diacritic signs.
Could you give me any solution?
It depends on what you are going to do with the text, but for many cases
it's possible to code independently on encoding. Anyway, if you redirect
output to a file and the result is OK (read: can be displayed opened by
text editor in Windows 1250 mode using proper font), your code is not the
problem.
The other thing is that you want to see CE characters in your console.
For that to work you need to do:
set your console window to use font capable of displaying them (you
may need to install such font, I don't remember The Right Way in Win 7)
set your console to Windows-1250 mode using command chcp 1250
Note that this is basically the same you would need to do with your viewer
or editor to see the characters. Except that while many editors are able
to detect encoding themselves (sometimes even correctly) and pick the right
font, consoles typically need help from you.
Your problem might be similar to what has been solved here. I also
recommend reading the other post I'm referencing there.
I wrote this question and it turns out the code is correct but it doesnt display properly on my system. I dont understand! why might it do this? My system is set to united states english. I dont know what the problem can be.
This makes it difficult to develop unicode apps when it doesn't display properly on my system :(
-Edit- To be more clear. I made a winform app using .NET and the text appears incorrect on my machine but works on others. I can copy/paste text into my app but i wont know if it ran correctly since i see nonsense instead of text. However most unicode works. Special chars (like >16bits) does not.
I assume from the question you linked to that you are on a windows machine. The problem could be that windows does not have a global encoding option at all. The united states english is a language setting which as far as I know does not mean what you expect it to mean, as in it does not set all of your programs to show text in a unicode format.
The quick answer is that especially in windows, each program that displays text to the user is responsible for the character encoding. You have to make sure that the program and the environment where the problem appears are set to display text using some unicode format, such as UTF-8.
Read up on Unicode and UTF-8
I have several Java files that have Japanese strings in them, and are encoded in UTF-8. I use Eclipse. However, whenever Eclipse touches them in any automated way, it turns the Japanese into garbage. A good example of this is JAWJAW, the Java Japanese WordNet interface. You can see the code on the website with Japanese characters in it. If you load the project into Eclipse, though, everything will fail because the characters are garbled (bakemoji).
Does anyone know how to fix this?
What is the default encoding for your project?
Future version of Eclipse (like e4) could be set by default to UTF-8, which would avoid any automatic conversion into "garbage".
See bug 108668 for more on that reflexion:
No solution will be perfect. However in the long term I think the current platform specific approach is clearly inferior to a platform-independent UTF-8 default.
+1 UTF-8 should be the obvious default character set for all text files, I had
a problem with eclipse when I was using an English Windows XP system and trying
to open a file in eclipse with Chinese characters, as you can imagine the
display is completely messed up and eclipse doesn't tell me what I need to do.
I had to spend time google for answers. I had to put -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 in
eclipse.ini so that it behaves correctly.
Making UTF-8 the default is not the right solution for the problem you were
having.
+1 for embedding encoding in the character stream wherever we can (like XML, HTTP, some kinds of file systems).
Encoding is meta-info for the data and belongs to the data, not to a separate user-changeable setup.
The primary reason for this cause is - the unicode supported font is missing from the system fonts. So do the following things to get it done.
Download Arial Unicode MS font and put it inside windows->fonts
directory in windows.
Change the default text encoding in eclipse to UTF-8 by navigating to
Window->Preferences->General->Workspace->Text File encoding
->Other->UTF-8
set Arial Unicode MS font to the Text Font attribute by navigating to
Window->Preferences->General->General->Appearance->colors and
Fonts->Basic->Text Font (select it)->Edit
I am looking for a (simple) text editor that can handle text in different encodings in the same document.
I need to develop some sites with mixed Japanese and English text and the editors I have now (on an English Windows system) are unable to display the Japanese text.
Jedit files don't display the Japanese text I have inputted but when I look at the file in a browser it shows up correctly.
Gvim shows all Japanese text in the editor as question marks and also in the browser.
In Gvim inputting the kanji works (you input the pronounciation and then press space bar to get the kanji) but when you confirm the kanji you want it replaces that kanji with question marks. (1 question mark for every kanji).
Can someone recommend me a text editor to edit html and php files that is able to display utf-8 encoded text and also save as an utf-8 file ?
thank you.
After reading about emacs I installed it. see below.
Thanks everybody for the hints.
if you don't have a unicode font yet you have to find one online or buy one.
here are the instructions to install the font on a windows system http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314960
jEdit
I changed my font in Jedit to a UTF font and now the Japanese shows up normally.
inputting the Japanese is still problematic as you don't see what you are typing.
(to change your font to edit files go to Utilities -> Global Options -> text area
select a Unicode font and you'll be able to see the Japanese characters.
gVim
I am still trying to figure out how to add a font in gvim. Once I know how to do that I ll update this.
Emacs
Emacs does not show the kanji correctly, they are displayed as ??? but at least I can see what I type in Japanese and select the right word.
so at this point I have to say that in jEdit I can see Japanese text but I can't input Japanese text. Gvim I can input Japanese text but inside the text area it is displayed as ??? and the same goes for Emacs.
adding a font in emacs and gvim is sadly enough not a trivial task.
At the moment I use notepad with the Arial unicode MS font and saving as UTF-8 file as my Japanese editor. Not ideal but at least it works.
Notepad++ is highly recommended.
Emacs correctly handles UTF-8 for me. (And of course, it can edit HTML and PHP files).
I would recommend Vim still. The problem you were seeing with questions marks is probably an issue with the font you were using. When displaying text that contains characters not in the currently language applications typically display them as empty boxes or question marks. See here for UTF-8 support in Vim.
This section of the Vim manual is also helpful, especially for setting up UTF-8 in Windows.
There is an issue with most Unicode-aware text editors: when you select a font, they stick to it. If the font does not include a glyph for a character, then the default substitution character (I believe U+FFFD, REPLACEMENT CHARACTER) is used.
In contrast, web browsers typically try to find a glyph for the characters they have to display among all the fonts provided by the system.
So, what you need, if you don't have the font "Arial Unicode MS" or similar (including Japanese glyphs), is an editor that tries to match glyphs with other fonts except the selected one.
Until someone provides a link for such an editor, I'll suggest a (somewhat extreme :) editor:
Install the latest stable python 2.x version for MS Windows (currently 2.6).
Include "idle" in the installation.
Start → Programs → Python 2,6 → Idle (Python Gui)
The "idle" editor is typically used to edit python code (and test it interactively in the Python shell). However, it can be used as a plain fully-Unicode-aware text editor, and when saving text including non-ASCII chars, it defaults to UTF-8 encoding.
Now, idle is based on Tkinter, which is an interface to tk, which is a gui library for tcl; tcl/tk, like web browsers, when asked to display a character for which no glyph is present in the widget font, it searches other fonts too.
However far-fetched this may seem, I really believe it would help; if no other solution helps you, give it a try.
Vim works fine for me as a UTF-8 text editor.
Firstly, you need a font that has the characters you are using. Choosing another text editor won't help you with this (unless it searches for other fonts for the correct characters when the font you are using doesn't have them). If you are using gVim, you can set the font like:
set guifont=Consolas
(This is not to say that Consolas is the font you want.) You probably want to put this in the .vimrc file so that it is always used.
Secondly, Vim needs to interpret the file as UTF-8, which it doesn't always automatically do. To make it do this, do:
set encoding=utf8
You can also see what encoding it is using with:
set encoding?
EmEditor is written by a Japanese company for exactly this purpose. It is a fine text editor with good performance/simplicity but pretty much all the features expected of a capable editor; I use it as my default when on the Windows platform, as well as for editing Japanese web page templates. It deserves to be better-known IMO; it is at least as good as, say, TextPad, but with full Unicode support.
Unfortunately it is not free, however you can find a free version of the old EmEditor 6 at sites such as download.com.
You can use just Notepad.exe with the "Arial Unicode MS" font (if all of your text is left-to-right, given the English windows version). Just Save as, select UTF-8.
In general, use your favourite editor with a font like "Arial Unicode MS". I mention this one because is the font with the greatest Unicode coverage I have seen,
Try BabelPad. Editing-wise, it's simple. Unicode-support-wise, it's awesome!
It sounds like maybe the problem with Jedit is the font - are you using a font that can display all the characters correctly?
To be more precise, Arial Unicode MS is a reasonable choice for a Unicode font that can display a wide range of characters across the range of languages. There are certain issues with it that can make it less than optimal for some languages used in isolation - this is why there are also language specific Unicode fonts included with Windows.
I've never had a problem with vim as long as I use a font that actually contains the characters I want. It needs to be a monospace font. :set enc=utf8 to get to utf8 mode. Then you can use :digraph command to get a display of available characters, and see how each is displayed.
To add a font, add it in Windows (Control Panel/Fonts/Add Font). If it's a monospace font, it will then show up in vin in /Edit/Font.
Just to add another one: I just checked that Programmer's Notepad 2 has some UTF-8 setting too.
(vim and emacs do just fine as well)
EditPlus seems to be an better option for UTF-8 as I have used it.
EditPad Lite and Pro fully support Unicode as of version 6. (Disclaimer: Those are my own products.)
If you get question marks, you're using an encoding that does not support Japanese characters. In EditPad, you can change the text encoding (Unicode, legacy code pages) via Convert, Text Encoding. You can set the defaults per file type in Options, Configure File Types, Encoding.
If you see squares instead of Japanese characters, select a Japanse font or Unicode font. You can do this in EditPad via Options, Font.
To type Japanese, simply install a Japanese keyboard driver in the keyboard settings in the Windows Control Panel, if you haven't already.
EditPad Pro has preconfigured file types for PHP and HTML.
Kate. and by extension, any other KDE program that uses Kate as an embedded KPart (KWrite, Quanta+, KDevelop). It handles lots of encodings, but i like to always use UTF-8. It also has a huge collection of syntax highlightings.
Try SciTE http://gisdeveloper.tripod.com/scite.html. It's just great ;)
For very basic UTF-8 multilingual text editing, I have had good luck with BabelPad (www.babelstone.co.uk): it's free, simple and robust and displays almost everything with no fuss. When the editing needs are more severe, I resort a lot to EditPad Pro, or occasionally Notepad++. For non-Unicode editing on Windows, I'm a TextPad user--my staff and I have probably spent about 200,000 hours in TextPad, with only occasional forays into NotePad2, MadEdit, jEdit, XML Copy Editor, and EPCedit. The latter two handle UTF-8 XML files well. All of the editors mentioned above are free except TextPad and EditPad Pro. Thanks to the person who suggested Emeditor. I'll try it out. --PFSchaffner
I like jEdit for it's ability to ident wrapped lines. Really nice when editing XML files. A word of warning though: It's Java, so it's not light fast, like you would expect a text editor to be.
Text codecs are fully supported. It distinguishes between text files with and without the header identifying the file format (byte order mark), calling them UTF-8 and UTF-8Y. This is something that I'm missing in other text editors.
Try EditPlus. It has specific support for HTML, syntax highlighting and can also work as a simple IDE for any compiler.
On the Mac: SubEthaEdit has excellent support for character encodings.
TextPad is a good utility too. It's a trialware, but does the job fine. See how to set char-encoding-setting-in-textpad.
For japanese, Sakura Editor is exceptional. It can display UTF-8, EUC-JP, SJIS and so on.
http://www.ultraedit.com/ is a multiplatform editor that does UTF-8 and all kinds of conversions between formats
EditPad Pro ... is recommended for u
cheers ;)