[OS X TeX] Some Encoding & Keyboard Questions

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 03.02.2006 um 15:54 schrieb Herbert Schulz:

> Howdy,
>
> I'm pretty much and encoding and non-US keyboard ignoramous so I  
> have the following questions, most concerning the bullet (¥)  
> character.
>
> 1)Does Opt-8 give a bullet on all keyboard layouts by default? I  
> know I've set autocomplete up with my TeXShop to expand it to  
> \textbullet but I want to know the default behavior.
>

No. On a German keyboard it gives {. Alt-shift-9 produces á, but the  
bullet is alt-Ÿ: ¥.


> 2)If I have my default file encoding set to UTF-8 how does TeXShop  
> know that a certain file is not in UTF-8 when it reads it? If I  
> open a MacOSRoman (my actual default - just because) file a dialog  
> box comes up saying it isn't UTF-8 and will be read in as  
> MacOSRoman. Is there some sort of BOM at the start of a UTF-8 file  
> that distinguishes it from other (indistinguishable by TeXShop)  
> formats?

No, this cannot be. Otherwise TeX could not process that file or find  
an error: neither a comment sign nor a valid character.

>
> 3)I sometimes see, from e-mail replies, that the bullet character  
> (¥) I sent looks different in the quoted material than when I sent  
> it. Sometomes it looks like a small black apple glyph sometimes  
> something else. Is there some partial translation being made  
> somewhere?

I would need the eMails, the original one and the returned one to  
find this. I don't think that this translation can take place. The  
original character codes are encoded as base64, having only the seven  
less significant bits used, that these codes can pass without change  
every relay.

>
> 4)Am I correct in assuming that .plist files are always stored as  
> UTF-8? What about internal strings within the TeXShop binary? Oops  
> that's two questions.
>

There are some exceptions in .plist files. They are mentioned in the  
Console from time to time.

I think they are, otherwise I wouldn't have seen German umlauts as  
two bytes with Ã, for example: Schlüsselbund  ...

--
Greetings

   Pete

"What do you think of Western Civilisation?"
  "I think it would be a good idea!"
     - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi


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