[texworks] texworks and encodings

[Lars Madsen]

On 05/21/2011 10:09 AM, Stefan Löffler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2011-05-20 16:20, Lars Madsen wrote:
>> Wouldn't it be possible for TW to detect the encoding and switch to
>> that encoding when working with this file.
>
> The answer to this question is manifold.
> As Herbert already pointed out, encoding detection is essentially
> guessing (and often requires language-detection as well). Of course I
> agree that ideally, Tw should "just work", no matter what file is thrown
> at it, but...
>
> In many (simple) situations I don't expect this to be a problem. As long
> as you only deal with your own documents, e.g., you can either use the
> default utf-8 (preferred) or - especially in cases that you want to work
> with other files created by a different program - change the default
> accordingly.
>
> If you use non-ASCII characters, you need the inputenc package, AFAIK.
> So you should at least be aware that a thing like encoding exists and
> can possibly cause problems.
>
> Only when dealing with files with using different encodings this causes
> problems, but in that case it's certainly the safest to add information
> about the encoding near the top of the file, which Tw picks up similar
> to TeXShop. Moreover, others who may want to work with the file can also
> quickly see what encoding was used and take the necessary steps without
> having to contact the original author to figure out what encoding to use.
>
> So far for the practical aspects. In addition, there are a few technical
> issues involved:
>
> Qt doesn't support encoding-detection.
>
> Using additional libraries creates additional dependencies (which
> possibly complicate building the program, at least on some OSs). And
> they increase the size of Tw. The unicode ICU library for example has
> 18.7 MB on my Linux system!
>
> So, the bottom line is: it would be great to have it, but the cost is
> rather high, and (I hope) the encoding issue only affects a minority of
> Tw users. FWIW, I recently added the possibility to "reload a file using
> a selected encoding" to avoid having to go to a different editor to add
> the "%!TEX encoding" modline. This was also added to the manual, and
> should be included in the upcoming 0.4.1 release.
>
> HTH
> Stefan

That sounds like a good compromise

I'll add something about the %!TEX modline in my LaTeX book

Of course it is not a problem when users use their own computers. But it 
will come when users either use Lab computers or when they exchange 
files among them self.

/daleif