Ben, Try to write these french words in a file with a latin1 fileencoding: bœuf, cœur, manœuvre, œil (beef, heart, manoeuvre, eye)
Close this file. Set encoding to utf-8 in your vimrc. Open the file. Encoding is utf-8 Fileencoding is latin1 (:set fileencoding?), converted is written after the file name. But all words have squares. (The same file is visualized well in notepad+++, recognized as latin1) Btw you asked me how I check encoding and fileencoding of a file? I have this in my statusline: set statusline+=%2*\ E:%{&fileencoding?&fileencoding:&encoding} set statusline+=%2*\ F:%{&fileencoding?&fileencoding:&fileencoding} Years ago I had also problems with utf-8 and switched back to latin1 encoding. These days I switched again to utf-8 and after a while it messed up again my files (p.e. my vimrc file). A question: Why should there be an encoding and fileencoding? Why not put them together? If a file is a latin1 file: encoding and fileencoding has to be in latin1. If a file is an utf-8 file: encoding and fileencoding has to be in utf-8. Without "Conversion" written after a file name. And in the Config file a user can then indicate whether a new file should be in utf-8 or any other encoding, something like this: let NewFileEncoding = "utf-8" -- -- You received this message from the "vim_use" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_use" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to vim_use+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.