Editor / txt-format for crossmodding Windows-Linux?

[jastey]

This is a dead serious question. I am using Windows, and am collaborating modding wise with a Linux user.

 

The iteration we go through reads as follows:

First .tra files I got, in my Notepad the special letters were gone (ä,ü,ö).

Second set of .tra-files, the special letters were there, but the encoding was UTF-8. I am using ANSI, and I didn't notice the difference due to lack of knowledge in this regard, so there were other problems arising from that.

Third step is I change the coding to ANSI with my editor, but still there are hidden characters that I have to get rid of by copying and pasting the content into a new editor, using Wordpad.

 

My question(s):

 

-Is there a good editor for Linux that supports ANSI, or

 

-Would it make sense, i.e. would it be the same for WeiDU, if I'd work (under Windows) in the UTF-8 format for all my files, or

 

-Does anyone have a good solution for this (hilarious, but annoying) situation?

 

(Note: I have tried and abandoned ConTEXT, so both switching to that would be no solution for me.)

[the bigg]

WeiDU doesn't currently understand UTF-8. Do you know what desktop environment does your Linux cooperator use? Suggesting E.G. to a Gnome user to use Kate is worse than suggesting Cam to use Vlad's Baldurdash.

actually, suggesting a Linux user to change his text editor is even worse than suggesting to use a cross-DE program, but hey

 

Anyway, in Linux I use Kate. From the Tools menu, manually selecting the iso 8859-1 Encoding and Windows/DOS End of Line works fine with the .tra you sent me. It remembers the setting correctly when reopening the same file, but needs to be restated for every file. I'd assume the same for most other editors. (to give background, I believe that ANSI is Microsoft's mislabeling of extended ASCII, which is the ISO 8859-1 standard).

 

There must be a reason why I dislike working in Italian

[Caillean]

Hi, I'm the Linux user jastey spoke of :-)

 

I'm using KDE, not Gnome, and Kate is fine with me. I tried ISO 8859-1, but unfortunately it doesn't work for the umlauts, for they are replaced with question marks all through the text. But at least it's okay for the English language then? Why must Windows always have something special I've found some converter for different text encodings, it's called libiconv, just compiled and installed it. Perhaps this will help along.... Or maybe there's an editor for Windows usable with wine, I tried ConText, it's running but awfully slow

[the bigg]

This isn't actually a case of "M$ is different". This is a case of "everybody fucked everything up".

 

Anyway, if Jas provides you with ANSI-encoded files and then you select ISO 8859-1 encoding, then it should work correctly in Kate. Otherwise, if you're hardcore, try vim

[Caillean]

We should be careful with comments, or else we'll be stoned by some Windows users

 

I guess I'm not hardcore enough for VIM I'll use Notepad for a final save of my tra's, I guess, just to be sure. Libiconv seems to support anything but ANSI (that's ISO 6937/2)

 

EDIT: A Linux adept I know was so kind to code a perl script for me that converts UTF-8 to ANSI . It works for any special characters and is easy to use in a terminal. So if any Linux users are interested in this, just let me know :-)