On Aug 21, 2008, at 5:38 PM, Christiaan Hofman 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" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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.
>
>>
>>>> I just wondered whether bibdesk ought to be able to assess the
>>>> encoding of the file (TextMate seems to be able to), or whether  
>>>> this
>>>> error message might suggest trying a different encoding?
>>>
>>> TextMate always tries UTF-8; since a file can't be misinterpreted as
>>> UTF-8,
>>> this is safe (BibDesk does it as well, in the case I mentioned
>>> above).
>>> Unfortunately, to try and guess encoding when opening a BibTeX
>>> document from
>>> the Finder would be problematic with BibDesk's error display, among
>>> other
>>> things, so it has to be specified by the user.
>>
>> Christiaan wrote:
>>
>>> If you have set ASCII as the default encoding in the Files prefs,  
>>> you
>>> can change that to UTF-8. If you get a warning when opening a file
>>> that was saved with ASCII encoding, you can safely ignore that.
>>
>> Yes, that works, the file now opens with a double click (and the ï
>> char shows up properly).
>>
>>> BibDesk could try to guess the encoding of the file, but that would
>>> be
>>> wrong and lying to you. With lots of bad consequences, including
>>> files
>>> that may not save. Note that being able to open a file with a
>>> particular encoding is no guarantee that that's the right one. And  
>>> if
>>> it isn't, you will have messed up text without knowing it, and you
>>> probably won't be able to save the file. That's why BibDesk always
>>> either fails or warns. Also note that, unlike TextMate, you don't
>>> really see the plain text that's downloaded.
>>>
>>> Note that you can also use the Open... menu item to open a file
>>> with a
>>> particular encoding.
>>
>> Perhaps the error display dialog could simply suggest "You could try
>> opening this file with a different encoding"?
>>
>> The current message is:
>>
>> "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).

It's not possible to open a file dialog with that file selected?  Fair  
enough, well, maybe just a note?

btw, PLOS is asking me (I reported a bug) is they could write a BOM  
mark or something to make the encoding detectable for double click  
opening?

--J
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