[OS X TeX] TeXShop, perl and utf-8 encoding problems

[Maarten Sneep]

On 20 feb 2005, at 13:28, Stephen Moye wrote:

> I have used both Cyclone and (as I pointed out earlier) BBEdit to 
> attempt this conversion. The problem is that the accented characters 
> become human-unreadable in TeXShop. This is all the more irritating in 
> that TeXShop clearly knows how, in a new document, to take a ç typed 
> from the keyboard and typeset a ç.

Are you _absolutely sure_ that the text encoding in TeXShop is set 
correctly? (Don't double click or drop the file on the icon, use the 
Open… item in the file menu, it will let you choose the encoding).

> Is it too much to ask of a computer program to have it say: "Ah, this 
> fellow is using MacOSEncoding and has typed a ç; I just happen to know 
> that that is Unicode 00E7, and that's what I'm going to give him."

Yes, that is too much to ask, as text without encoding happens to be 
"just another bag of bits", and those bits are interpreted as whetever 
TeXShop happens to think they mean. When the preferences are set 
incorrectly, you simply get what you asked for. To quote a famous 
computer scientist: “Computers are good at following instructions, but 
not at reading your mind”. (The TeXBook, page 9).

Maarten

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