Re: [Bibdesk-users] utf8 bibtex file; should it be auto-recognized?

[Maxwell, A. R <ada...@pn...>]

On 08/21/08 14:38, "Christiaan Hofman" <cmh...@gm...> wrote:

> 
> On 21 Aug 2008, at 11:18 PM, James Howison wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Aug 21, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Maxwell, Adam R wrote:
>> 
>>> On 08/21/08 12:34, "James Howison" <jho...@sy...> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> PLOS is publishing their bibtex in utf8 (as a downloaded .bib file).
>>>> Which is fine, if one opens the file with utf8 encoding.  However
>>>> when
>>>> I double click it, BibDesk (1.3.18) gives the "Unable to parse
>>>> string
>>>> as BibTeX" error, which suggests editing, but not trying a different
>>>> encoding.
>>> 
>>> Try dropping the file on your document's main window, which I should
>>> have
>>> suggested to JT as well.  That will force BibDesk to guess the
>>> encoding, and
>>> UTF-8 will be tried if the file does not have a Unicode BOM (unless
>>> that's
>>> changed in the last few months).  Double-clicking the file only uses
>>> your
>>> default encoding.
>> 
>> Dropping the file I linked to does import the entry, but it produces a
>> different (wrong) result (the umlauted i char is messed up) than using
>> the open-with encoding option.
> 
> It probably used Unicode, because that's tried before UTF-8. Shows my
> point that you can't just trust it only because it didn't fail.

It only uses Unicode if the file has the appropriate BOM, and UTF-8 must not
have that.  James, what is the encoding of the document you dropped the file
on?  If it's Mac Roman or Latin 1, it's probably "succeeding" with that
encoding and never tries UTF-8.  Mac Roman is gapless so you'll always get
something out of it.

>> "There was a problem reading the file.  Do you want to give up, edit
>> the file to correct the errors, or keep going with everything that
>> could be analyzed?"
>> 
>> I suggest:
>> 
>> "There was a problem reading the file.  Do you want to give up, edit
>> the file to correct the errors, keep going with everything that could
>> be analyzed, or try to open the file after specifying a different
>> encoding?"
>> 
>> and adding an "Open With Encoding" button, which goes to the regular
>> Open dialog box.
>> 
>> --J
> 
> We can't offer that option, as the document has already failed at that
> point. At that point there's no way back to try again. (well, there
> might be by completely rewriting the document based architecture,
> that's not an option).

That's a modal panel that runs before returning yes or no, so it hasn't
failed as far as the document is concerned.  I think the larger problem is
that it's a generic error message that may be shown for syntax and other
errors, not just encoding.

-- 
Adam