[OS X TeX] TeXShop encoding issue

[Richard M. Koch]

Rowland,

If you open a file in TeXShop by double clicking or dragging to the TeXShop icon, it will open using the default encoding, set in TeXShop Preferences. I agree with others that you should use UTF-8 if you want to preserve a range of non-ASCII characters.

If you open a file by using the TeXShop "Open" command, an "Open Dialog" will appear. If you select "Options" then you can select the
encoding option you prefer for that one file.

One caveat: most encodings are just long streams of bytes, and if one of these doesn't represent a character, you'll get a question mark. But UTF-8 is an encoding with "rules" and if you try to open a random stream of bytes, it will likely not follow the rules. Then the system cannot open the file with UTF-8, and will warn you and then default to something else.

Dick Koch

.