[vim/vim] fix: convert *_utf-8.vim keymap files to actual UTF-8 encoding (PR #19240)

Thanh Nguyen

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Jan 22, 2026, 7:10:35 AM (yesterday) Jan 22

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Problem

Several keymap files with _utf-8 in their filename are actually encoded in latin1 or cp1255, not UTF-8. This causes errors when tools attempt to read these files as UTF-8:

esperanto_utf-8.vim: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf9 in position 336
greek_utf-8.vim: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb4 in position 24957
hebrewp_utf-8.vim: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf9 in position 262

Analysis

File	Original Encoding	Issue
`esperanto_utf-8.vim`	latin1	Contains `Ù`/`ù` (U WITH GRAVE) as keymaps; has `scriptencoding latin1` directive
`greek_utf-8.vim`	latin1	Contains `´`/`ª` characters in keymap entries
`hebrewp_utf-8.vim`	cp1255 (Windows Hebrew)	Contains Hebrew characters in comments

Solution

Convert all three files from their source encoding to proper UTF-8
Update scriptencoding directive in esperanto_utf-8.vim from latin1 to utf-8

Verification

All three files now pass UTF-8 validation:

>>> for f in files:
...     open(f, encoding='utf-8').read()  # No errors

The keymap functionality remains unchanged - only the encoding was modified.

closes #16390

You can view, comment on, or merge this pull request online at:

https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/19240

Commit Summary

3832009 fix: convert *_utf-8.vim keymap files to actual UTF-8 encoding

File Changes

(3 files)

M runtime/keymap/esperanto_utf-8.vim (8)
M runtime/keymap/greek_utf-8.vim (4)
M runtime/keymap/hebrewp_utf-8.vim (56)

Patch Links:

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Thanh Nguyen

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Jan 22, 2026, 8:36:38 AM (yesterday) Jan 22

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ThanhNguyxn left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

The CI failure in linux (huge, gcc, no_x11_wl) appears to be a flaky test unrelated to this change, as this PR only modifies runtime keymap files and doesn't touch any C code or tests.

Could a maintainer please re-run the failed job? Thank you!

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Christian Brabandt

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Jan 22, 2026, 4:10:22 PM (20 hours ago) Jan 22

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chrisbra left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

Thanks. Just curious, how did you notice?

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Thanh Nguyen

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Jan 22, 2026, 10:10:03 PM (14 hours ago) Jan 22

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ThanhNguyxn left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

Thanks. Just curious, how did you notice?

I tried fixing it with Neovim, and they told me to switch to Vim first, and then I would be transferred to Neovim

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Christian Clason

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3:26 AM (8 hours ago) 3:26 AM

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clason left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

@ThanhNguyxn I think Christian is asking how you noticed that the files (in Neovim) had the wrong encoding. What were you doing with them?

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Thanh Nguyen

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3:35 AM (8 hours ago) 3:35 AM

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ThanhNguyxn left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

@clason I was working on a tool that processes Vim runtime files and needs to read them as UTF-8. When iterating through keymap files, Python's open(file, encoding='utf-8') raised UnicodeDecodeError on these three files.

Since the filenames contain _utf-8, I expected them to be UTF-8 encoded, but they were actually encoded in latin1/cp1255. The existing issue #16390 also reported this same problem.

So I converted them to proper UTF-8 encoding to match their filenames.

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Thanh Nguyen

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3:38 AM (8 hours ago) 3:38 AM

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ThanhNguyxn left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

Apologies for the confusion in my earlier reply and the incorrect issue reference in the PR description.

Context: I discovered this encoding issue while working on a tool that processes Vim/Neovim runtime files. Python's open(file, encoding='utf-8') raised UnicodeDecodeError on these three keymap files when iterating through them.

The original issue was reported in Neovim: neovim/neovim#31688. I initially submitted a PR there (neovim/neovim#37499), but @clason advised that since these files are synced from Vim, the fix should be made here first, then ported to Neovim.

Note: The closes #16390 in my PR description was a mistake - that PR is unrelated (it's about v:stacktrace). I'll update the description to remove that reference.

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Christian Brabandt

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4:38 AM (7 hours ago) 4:38 AM

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chrisbra left a comment (vim/vim#19240)

Thanks. I did a quick test:

find runtime -type f -name "*utf-8*.vim" -exec sh -c 'iconv -f utf-8 -t utf-8 "$1" >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "non utf-8 encoding detected in $1"'  find-sh {} \; |grep  "non utf-8 encoding"

this found a few more files that claim to be utf-8 but are latin9 encoding.

I think it makes sense to stick something into our CI like this:

find . -type f -name "*utf-8*.vim" -exec sh -c 'iconv -f utf-8 -t utf-8 "$1" >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "non utf-8 encoding detected in $1"'  find-sh {} \; |grep  "non utf-8 encoding" && exit 3

Will prepare such a change for CI later and fix the remaining files when I merge this PR here.