In this AutoHotkey Webinar took a deep-dive into File Encoding by our guest speaker Jean Lalonde (author of Quick Access Popup)
Video Hour 1: High Level:
- Why File encoding matters
- Pros/Cons of each type of encoding
- Tools like the File Encoding Lab to help determine a file’s encoding
- How to set File Encoding in AutoHotkey
Video Hour 2: Coding and Q&A
- Other mentions in Hour 2:
- CodeQuickTester helps quickly test code w/o saving
- New Hotstrings command
- Neural Networks (topic for March webinar)
Script Highlight: BarChart by Learning One
(Here is a link to BarChart scripts demonstrated during the webinar)
1) File Enconding in AutoHotkey
(Here is a link to all of Jean Lalonde’s files)
- Edit and run the AHK script “FileRead.ahk”
- Load “Demo-UTF-16.txt” with default encoding
- Load “Demo-UTF-16-No_BOM.txt” with default encoding -> problem!
- Load “Demo-UTF-16-No_BOM.txt” with UTF-16-RAW encoding -> OK!
- Try the other file enconding available in AHK
2) File Encoding in DOS (code pages)
- Run the batch file “Type Box.bat” in DOS console (under “Tutorial“ folder)
- See this ASCII/ANSI file displayed with code pages 1252 (default ASCI/ANSI) and 437
3) Load the File Encoding Lab
- Run the AHK script “File Encoding Lab.ahk”
- Loaded bu default “ASCII.txt” (detected CP1252, 7-bit chars)
- File Encoding Lab tour
- Binary display on the left side / Normal AHK display on the right
- Click on the file name to see with Notepad
- Encoded detected and use the dropdown list to reload with another encoding
- Load “ANSI.txt” (detected CP1252, 8-bit chars)
- Load “Box-CP437.txt” (detected CP1252, 8-bit chars)
- Which encoding will display a box?
- Load “UTF-8.txt” (detected UTF-8)
- see BOM (“byte ordre mark” or header) on left side: two first bytes
- See one byte for “!”
- See two bytes each for “é” and “É«
- See three bytes for “用”
4) File Encoding Lab Cheat Sheet
- ASCII and ANSI
- Unicode 8-16-32 bits
- Unicode with/without BOM
- Unicode Little or Big Endian
5) Real life files
- LinkedIn Connections Export UTF-8 No BOM
- open “Connection.csv” in MS Excel
- convert it to ANSI or UTF-16 with CSV Buddy (http://code.jeanlalonde.ca/csvbuddy/)
- QAP Spanish translation
- QAP Chinese translation
- Other examples?
