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Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:40:05 +0100
From: Tony Mechelynck <antoine.mechely...@gmail.com>
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To: vim_multibyte@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Unicode conversion bug?
References: <672e42ee-97d1-4979-83b4-402f2e30cbc0@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com> <47D78E76.2040408@gmail.com> <47D79E02.4040402@hkstar.com> <47D7A455.9020905@gmail.com> <47D8943B.5080409@hkstar.com>
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Mansing wrote:
> The instruction works! Seems I must set both "enc" and "fenc" correctly
> ~before~ loading an input file.
>
> I used to set only the "enc" to match input file format before loading,
> and then the "fenc" to match the desired output file format before
> saving --everything looked fine until you reopen the output file!
>
> Thank you!
> mt 2008-03-13

'enc' means how Vim represents the data in memory. 'fenc' means how the 
data is represented on disk, it will usually be set automagically at 
load-time depending on 'fencs' (plural) which defines the heuristics 
used by Vim to determine which encoding the file is in. If you want to 
edit one particular file whose 'fileencoding' (singular) cannot be 
properly detected by the 'fileencodings' (plural), then you will have to 
use ++enc=<something> in the ":edit" command itself, as shown under 
":help ++opt".

You don't have to change 'enc' as long as it contains glyphs for all the 
characters in the file. For instance, gvim with GTK2 GUI normally 
represents its data in UTF-8 internally, and since that Unicode encoding 
can represent anything, if your gvim (like mine) is for GTK2 (which 
usually means X11, which usually means Unix-like) you never need to 
change the 'enc' setting. Similarly, in any +multi_byte version of gvim, 
if you've set 'enc' to UTF-8 at the start of your vimrc, you can leave 
it so forever and never change it, because this way, any 'fileencoding' 
will be "representable" in memory.

You may change the 'fenc' of a loaded file, if you want to _change_ its 
disk representation. That's why whenever you do it, the file acquires 
'modified' status. You will then usually want to save your file under a 
different name (using ":saveas") so you'll have both versions (in both 
encodings) on your disk under different names and/or in different folders.


Best regards,
Tony.
-- 
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
results.
		-- Calvin Coolidge